THE ENGLIGHTENMENT OF WILL SMITH

At the time of writing this feature, a controversy was brewing over the lack of diversity in the 2016 Academy Award nominations. The most glaring of omissions was actor Will Smith for his moving portrayal of Nigerian-born Dr. Bennet Omalu in Concussion. The oversight is especially disappointing because even veteran filmmaker, Ridley Scott, who produced the film, agrees that Smith has never been better.

“I haven’t seen Will Smith like this before,” Scott declares. “He has this great power and dignity, yet he’s very contained and elegant. It’s the best I’ve seen him.”

Concussion introduces us to Dr. Bennet Omalu, the first doctor who found the connection between football and severe neurological problems brought on by repetitive head trauma. At the heart of Concussion are also the players who fell victim to the ravages of CTE and the film touches upon the lives of several well-known football players who suffered from dementia and depression, eventually leading to their early deaths – some accidental, some self-inflicted.

“At the center of this film is a man who was delivered a truth about a game that he had no connection to, but he had to deliver painful information to a group of people that he had a deep desire to be accepted by,” says Will Smith. “For myself, in this process I don’t think about football – my focus is on Bennet and the pain and triumph of the story of an immigrant who came to America, suffered what he had to suffer, and ultimately was vindicated.”

Smith continues, “I look at this film as the close of a chapter for Bennet. This is a man who was born during an air raid in Nigeria. His mother was hit by shrapnel when he was being delivered. To go from there, to go through the suffering of bringing this story to the American public, and then to have your life story told through a Hollywood film – that’s a beautiful hero’s journey.”

Smith’s performance, which included mastering a flawless Nigerian accent and losing his superstar image to embody Dr. Omalu took diligent observation. “Bennet is a forensic pathologist and he performs autopsies daily, so he spends a lot of time with dead bodies. But he’s also a deeply religious man,” says Smith. “He thinks of his job as a forensic pathologist more as a deliverer of souls – the last threshold guardian between this realm and the next. He’s a deeply spiritual man, and when he’s performing an autopsy, it’s a spiritual experience for him. He has a wonderful sixth sense about trying to figure out how a person died. He’ll go through their clothes and look and he’s trying to get them to help him figure out how they died. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.”

Peter Landesman, who also directed the film, wrote the role specifically with Smith in mind. “There was never anybody else in my mind, from the first word to the last,” he admits. “Not just his voice but his physicality – the grace and energy he brings to his performance. And his inherent joy, which matches Bennet’s. It wasn’t more than a couple days after finishing the script that Ridley called Will, and Amy Pascal gave it to him.”

Smith reciprocates the admiration. “Peter has a really unique skill set. (He) is an investigative reporter. He’s used to going into the minutia of a circumstance and a person – he’s used to going broad and deep with things in a way that you generally wouldn’t do with a movie. Yet he’s also a painter, so he takes all of that and he translates it into imagery, which is a really rare gift.”

But it was only when Smith met with Dr. Omalu that the deal was sealed. “He talked about being a young boy growing up in Nigeria. He said, and we used this in the film, when he was growing up, Heaven was here – holding his hand high – and America was here – holding his hand just slightly lower. America was the place where God sent all of his favorite people, and he never wanted anything more than to be accepted as an American,” says Smith. “For that man to be the person who discovered CTE and had to bring the information to America about their favorite sport, that conflict was so powerful, I was deeply intrigued as an artist. He’s a beautiful, sweet brilliant honorable almost wonderfully naïve man, that he believes that the truth will set you free.”

“What was beautiful is even as he was telling me the story, he’s a man of science, so he couldn’t understand how knowing could be a bad thing,” adds Smith. “And even today he struggles with that – how more information could be a bad thing. What would make you reject knowing? For me – I was looking at his eyes while he was telling that story – I knew after that meeting that I would be telling his story to the world.”

But it was not only that Smith found Dr. Omalu to be a unique and inspiring character with a unique journey. The larger story was also one that Smith felt needed to be told. “I’m a football dad,” he says. “I have two sons – my oldest (Trey) was a big time football player. I think the thing that impelled me most to make this movie is that as a parent, is I actually had no idea. I was concerned about my son breaking his leg – my greatest concern when he was playing was spinal injury. But there was not one conversation, not one issue about long-term neurological repercussions. How could I possibly be a parent and have four years of football and have no information? For me, as a parent, I just felt I had to make this movie. As a parent, I had to put the information out for parents and players to be able to make an informed decision.”

We couldn’t agree more. Now if we only had the statuette in our hands…

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Special thanks to Columbia Pictures, Village Road Show Pictures.

KEEPING SCORE ROQUE BAÑOS

Spanish music composer, Roque Baños can bring a touch of sensuality even to morbid situations. In the more than seventy movies to which the prolific artist has given a heartbeat, the common thread has been an orchestral, full bodied, melodious sound that has been sorely missing in Hollywood movies of late. Perhaps we can attribute this to Baños’ training at the prestigious Berklee College of Music where he immersed himself in not just film scores, but also jazz. Listening to his breathtaking compositions for films like Segunda Piel, Fragiles and La Kaja Kovac, it’s little wonder that he has won the Spanish Goya Award for Best Original Score in both 2008 and 2009

While largely unknown to American audiences (his notable American scores limited to The Machinist starring Christian Bale and the Spike Lee remake of Oldboy) Baños is making a huge impact with his latest, Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea. It would be fair to say this score is a departure from the style of his Spanish projects (proof of his versatility?), but when one listens to tracks like Homecoming and Separation, his signature sound peeks in.

His ability to morph makes sense when you consider his diverse musical taste. “I have many favorite composers that are very different from one another,” he explains. ”When I listen to classical for example, I listen to Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Stravinsky…But then, I’m also a huge fan of Pink Floyd and I love Flamenco folk music. Music is infinite for me. You can always find sources of inspiration anywhere.”

As for his composing for Director, Ron Howard, Baños admits, “The music in big Hollywood films is changing to be more like a sound. In the Heart of the Sea is a very thematic score. Ron Howard was right in asking me for just an atmosphere that gives a feeling of horror sometimes. We try to represent through music how nature would sound, like the sea, the wind, the heat of the sun. All that was more than a melody. It was an atmosphere that I created with sounds from nature. I synthesized those things and put them through filters and such, but you could still hear the air, the water…I kind of created a new instrument.”

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In the Heart of the Sea is available on iTunes music.