Taylor Hackford secured the rights to Ray Charles’s life story in 1987, then spent years trying to get the film financed before Philip Anschutz finally stepped in with one major condition: it had to earn a PG-13. Universal didn’t come aboard until after production was complete, acquiring a finished film rather than developing it from the ground up. Charles himself read a Braille version of the script and saw an early cut, but he died in June 2004, just months before the movie reached theaters. By then, Jamie Foxx had already given him one hell of a farewell.

Ray begins in the late 1940s with Ray Charles Robinson (Foxx, Back in Action) traveling to Seattle, a young blind pianist already learning that talent won’t protect him from people eager to take advantage. Flashbacks return to his childhood in Florida, the death of his younger brother, and the gradual loss of his sight, while his mother, Aretha (Sharon Warren), refuses to raise him as helpless. Ahead are fame, addiction, marriage to Della Bea Robinson (Kerry Washington, Django Unchained), affairs, and the musical breakthroughs that will make Ray Charles one of the defining American artists of the 20th century.

Few Best Actor races have ever felt as settled before the envelope was opened. Foxx had made his name as a comedian on In Living Color, but Ray completely changed how audiences looked at him. Prosthetics kept his eyes sealed shut for stretches that could last up to 14 hours, and he performed the piano parts himself. Charles’s own recordings provide the vocals, but Foxx sells the physicality so completely that the seam almost disappears. More importantly, he never turns Charles into a saint. The selfishness is there, along with the heroin addiction, infidelity, temper, ambition, and ability to compartmentalize almost anything that gets between him and the next performance. Foxx understands that greatness and goodness aren’t the same thing. Then Ray sits down at a piano, and the movie catches fire. This is the rare Oscar-winning performance that seems to get better every time you revisit it.

Hackford, who also directed An Officer and a Gentleman, understands musical performance better than many filmmakers who have taken on biopics since. He knows when to watch Foxx’s hands, when to stay on his face, when to cut to the band, and when to let a whole room become part of the performance. Regina King is terrific as Margie Hendricks, the lead Raelette whose relationship with Ray becomes personal, professional, and volatile. Washington has the less flamboyant role as Della Bea, but she gives the movie an emotional counterweight whenever Ray’s appetites start swallowing everything around him.

The problem is scale. At 152 minutes, Ray still feels like it’s rushing because there is simply too much life here, and the movie occasionally turns Charles’s career into a series of milestones it needs to hit before moving on. The private chaos takes up so much oxygen that some of the musical evolution gets compressed. That problem has become even more familiar in the decades since, with movies like Bohemian Rhapsody and Elvis following variations of the rise, addiction, collapse, and redemption structure that Ray helped cement into the modern music-biopic formula. The difference is Foxx. A formula is a lot easier to forgive when somebody disappears this completely inside it.