★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Nisha Ganatra’s latest feature film, The High Note, is a classic story of someone who wants to succeed in the glamorous world of the Hollywood music industry. Talent and experience are nothing in the face of gumption, connections, and a can-do attitude. Armed with those weapons, anyone can succeed in the unfair land of singing (or acting, or modelling, or whatever it is the movie in question has decided to be about). You get it. You’ve seen this story before. You’re going to watch someone fight to succeed and that’s fun because it’s nice to watch people achieve their dreams.
In this case, those dreams are music producing. It’s been our protagonist Maggie’s (Dakota Johnson) goal ever since she was the young age of about twenty-three to be a music producer. If you think that’s not very long to have a dream considering she’s just fresh out of college, you’d be right! But that doesn’t stop Maggie from wanting to move up the music ladder right now. She’s just a personal assistant now but in no time she’ll be working with stars, not for them.
Via BBC
Maggie’s antics (like telling a veteran producer his proposed tracks are garbage) are the kind of actions that seem charmingly adorable in movies but would get her fired in a second in real life. When she takes a risk and tells her boss-slash-music-legend-slash-pseudo-mother, Grace Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross) that she shouldn’t make lazy career decisions and should instead produce a new album, the movie wants it to feel like a win for Maggie but the more cynical and experienced audience members are likely to see this for what it really is: a huge overstepping of boundaries. The movie wants you to believe passion is the only ingredient to success, that desire can transcend years of experience, but that’s not how it works. Over the near two hour runtime, Maggie never learns that wanting something is not the same thing as working for it. It took her idols years to reach the top of the music industry and the wide-eyed naivety that everyone is wrong for not taking her seriously is hard to swallow.
That being said, even the most unrealistic dream chaser is still fun to watch. The phenomenal acting from the cast — Ellis Ross in particular — combined with the intense love of music and wistful optimism makes the movie a fun time. Each song is well performed and so catchy you’ll still be singing them well after the movie is done. Grace feels like a real music legend; she knows she’s set records others will only dream of breaking. Her story battles with Maggie’s as the movie flips between focusing on the fight for success versus the difficulty of holding onto it. It almost feels like if Grace were the protagonist there could have been more depth to the story, that Maggie’s spark of passion could have been what was needed to ignite Grace’s flame. Grace, not Maggie, steps onto stage at the end of the film to sing with her son. Grace is the one achieving her dreams. The one who has already tasted success and has fought to get there. She’s the one you want to see stay at the top.
Via LA Times
When Jack (Ice Cube), Grace’s manager, gives Maggie a lecture about professionalism it’s supposed to feel like one of her lowest points in the film. He tells her:
“Being a producer is about having a point of view you’ve earned through years of hard work. It don’t happen like this.”
Instead, it’s a refreshing dose of realism. She might have the ambition to gumption her way into a conversation but the nuances and professional standards aren’t something she can will her way into learning overnight. Instant success doesn’t exist. Simply wanting something isn’t enough. Maggie has to work for it, the way Grace worked to become the star of the show. If more movies got that right, perhaps future Maggies (both fictional and real) won’t break apart when they realize that dreams don’t come easily. Sometimes they don’t come at all.