Sometimes a documentary maker stumbles upon a better story than they could have reasonaly expected to find. Ike White was convicted of murder as a young man, but such was his talent as a musician he managed to make a hit funk record while in gaol. He got out, blew his shot at fame, and disappeared. The film tracks him down, seemingly living a very mellow life on the Californian coast. But the whole story turns out to be much more complex than that. The take home message is really that some people are truly multi-faceted; both the bad and the good about Ike's life seem to be true, and while the stories he told about himself are most definitely not to be trusted, the truth itself is also pretty wild. With the help of some of Ike's numerous exes, the film manages to be both charming and disturbing; and well worth watching.
4 Reviews
Ch-ch-changes
frukuk18 June 2020
Everything proceeds pretty much as you'd expect; then, suddenly, you're hit in the solar plexus by a "present day" event that leads to the uncovering of a massive amount of often startling backstory.
So, having moved along sedately for about 45 minutes, things move up several gears and this becomes a captivating documentary.
The only real negative is that, despite seeing so much of Ike White's life via his personal video archive, I really can't claim to understand why his life took the course that it did. (Perhaps there's a clue in his striking similarity -- it's the eyes -- to Salvador Dali? Perhaps Ike White was really only cut out to be an artist, rather than a fully-rounded human being?)
So, having moved along sedately for about 45 minutes, things move up several gears and this becomes a captivating documentary.
The only real negative is that, despite seeing so much of Ike White's life via his personal video archive, I really can't claim to understand why his life took the course that it did. (Perhaps there's a clue in his striking similarity -- it's the eyes -- to Salvador Dali? Perhaps Ike White was really only cut out to be an artist, rather than a fully-rounded human being?)
Wow what a movie!
BandSAboutMovies10 December 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Ike White is one of those musical obscurities, like Jim Morrison's doppelganger from 1974, The Phantom, or "Sugar Man" Rodriquez, dubbed as a Bob Dylan doppelganger (ironically, both are from Detroit), that you won't read about in Rolling Stone Record Guides or musicpedias. Ike White is an artist - like unheralded R&B soul artists Gil Scott-Heron and Shuggie Otis - that should have been as chart-topping on radio station playlists and Billboard sales charts as Stevie Wonder. Or Al Green. Or Curtis Mayfield. We should speak of Ike White with the fervor afforded to George Clinton and Bootsie Collins. And King Sunny Aide. And Sun Ra. And Taj Mahal.
And, for a time, Ike White was. Then he simply vanished.
Ike White - sans our mentions of the chart-topping and commercially-aware artists of George Clinton, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, and Stevie Wonder - was an artist for record geeks. For he was an artist you heard of in the dusty, molded cardboard repositories of vintage vinyl outlets and record swap meets. He was a man doing life for murder; a multi-instrumentalist (even drums) discovered by the man who discovered Jimi Hendrix and took War and Sly and the Family Stone to the top of the charts. Sadly, even with the patronage of Jerry Goldstein and, eventually, Stevie Wonder himself - who secured Ike a new attorney and successfully got his prison sentence suspended - Ike White was a troubled soul beyond help.
And after one critically-acclaimed album - recorded inside prison - and an offer from CBS-TV to produce a TV movie about his life, Ike White went off the grid for over 40 years - like "Sugar Man" Rodriquez.
And like the similar-themed document Searching for Sugar Man, a film which reignited the forgotten musical career of Rodriquez, so could have The Changin' Times of Ike White. Instead, this BBC-TV production does not offer us the expected, uplifting fairy tale ending; it instead shifts from a life document into a twisted mystery about a man that many thought they knew; a life more complicated than anyone could have imagined.
This is the one time when you drop your hesitations on watching a documentary for your evening's entertainment - and watch it. You've never seen a documentary about a life with character revelations and plot twists like the life of Ike White.
And, for a time, Ike White was. Then he simply vanished.
Ike White - sans our mentions of the chart-topping and commercially-aware artists of George Clinton, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, and Stevie Wonder - was an artist for record geeks. For he was an artist you heard of in the dusty, molded cardboard repositories of vintage vinyl outlets and record swap meets. He was a man doing life for murder; a multi-instrumentalist (even drums) discovered by the man who discovered Jimi Hendrix and took War and Sly and the Family Stone to the top of the charts. Sadly, even with the patronage of Jerry Goldstein and, eventually, Stevie Wonder himself - who secured Ike a new attorney and successfully got his prison sentence suspended - Ike White was a troubled soul beyond help.
And after one critically-acclaimed album - recorded inside prison - and an offer from CBS-TV to produce a TV movie about his life, Ike White went off the grid for over 40 years - like "Sugar Man" Rodriquez.
And like the similar-themed document Searching for Sugar Man, a film which reignited the forgotten musical career of Rodriquez, so could have The Changin' Times of Ike White. Instead, this BBC-TV production does not offer us the expected, uplifting fairy tale ending; it instead shifts from a life document into a twisted mystery about a man that many thought they knew; a life more complicated than anyone could have imagined.
This is the one time when you drop your hesitations on watching a documentary for your evening's entertainment - and watch it. You've never seen a documentary about a life with character revelations and plot twists like the life of Ike White.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
