Respect: Aretha Explained... Just a Little Bit
By Liam Lacey
Rating: C
Respect, the new movie starring Jennifer Hudson as the late soul singer Aretha Franklin, proves once again that musical biopics have become the tribute mediocrity pays to talent.
An “ambitious” period drama (many costumes!) running almost two-and-a-half hours, Respect, covers Franklin’s life from around age 10, when her mother died, to age 30, with the 1972 release of her best-selling live gospel album, Amazing Grace (the subject of a terrific concert film by Sidney Pollack released in 2018).
Jennifer Hudson tries to dig deeper as an actress as the Queen of Soul in Respect.
In between there’s a procession of performance set-pieces, scenes of family and romantic conflict, culminating in a celebratory Black and feminist empowerment message. Whatever musical nostalgia and political uplift one can glean here repeatedly risks being undermined by the unfocused direction from first-time feature director, Liesl Tommy and a trite script from Tracey Scott Wilson.
Hudson, a two-time Grammy and Oscar-winner for 2006’s Dreamgirls, was Franklin’s handpicked choice for the role. She has a great voice, has assimilated Franklin’s vocal techniques, and has some virtuosic musical moments. But her acting range is much narrower than her vocal, bringing an unexpectedly tentative quality to Aretha’s regal persona.
The filmmakers don’t do Hudson any favours by concluding the film with the thrill-shock of Franklin’s 2015 Kennedy Centre Awards’ blazing performance of (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, before an audience that included ecstatic songwriter Carole King and the Obamas.
In a tonally-uneven jumble, there are some worthy moments here. Skye Dakota Turner does a great turn as 10-year-old “Ree” the prodigy, pulled out of bed to perform for one of her famous preacher father’s raucous Saturday Night parties.
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
As C.L. Franklin (whose sermons were released as LPs), Forest Whitaker has one good scene, evoking the power and history behind those famous sermons. Marlon Wayans is fine as Ted White, Franklin’s snaky, abusive first husband and manager. Broadway star, Audra McDonald has a resonant cameo as Aretha’s mother, Barbara, who died from a heart attack shortly after separating from her husband.
For music history fans, there are lots of cameos of historical personalities for considerations of historical accuracy, including Dinah Washington (Mary J. Blige, imperious), Martin Luther King (Gilbert Glenn Brown, robotic), Columbia’s genius talent spotter John Hammond (Tate Donovan, smiley and patrician), and Marc Maron (entertainingly playing himself) as Atlantic Records’ producer Jerry Wexler.
Wexler was the creative catalyst who brought the 24-year-old Franklin to the FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to record her first in a long string of hit records.
The first Muscle Shoals session, about the halfway mark in the film, is the first truly alive moment in the film, when we get a plausible, tingling pleasure from watching the collaborative process in action. It features characters such as producer-engineer Rick Hall (Myk Watford) and organist Spooner Oldham (David Simpson), who join with Aretha and begin to create something new.
Almost as good is a scene where she practices in the wee hours with her backup-singing sisters (Saycon Sengbloh, Hailey Kilgore) as they work out the “just a little bit” arrangement of the title song, Respect.
There are wads of touring and bad marriage dramatic filler until, at about the two hour mark (yes, I was looking at my watch) the movie takes another abrupt tone shift.
Aretha, having liberated herself from the domineering influence of her father and husband, transforms into an out-of-control diva, drinking heavily, snapping at the help and randomly cancelling bookings, before drunkenly face-planting off the stage in Columbus, Georgia, dressed in a Nefertiti hat.
No wonder her new man, Ken Cunningham (Albert Jones) warns her about the “demon” that seems to periodically possess her.
As Aretha hits bottom, so does the movie, in a scene where - sans wig and make-up - she receives a visitation from her dead mother, who puts her arms around her and removes the whisky bottle from her grip.
The bad diva phase, it turns out, is only a brief stop on the way to creative empowerment, as Aretha renounces the bottle and turns back to the church to record her 1972 gospel album. She insists on producing it herself, conceding to have it shot as a documentary. Some of those documentary scenes are recreated here, which is on odd choice, when the real, better version, is just a couple of clicks away.
Respect recycles all the musical biography cliches (Walk the Line, Ray, Judy, Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman) in which childhood trauma leads to meteoric success, followed by a substance-abuse-fueled crash, and eventual resurrection and reconciliation.
Along with the loss of her mother, Aretha’s other “wound” here is suggested in a scene implying childhood sexual abuse, though the biographical evidence is uncertain and the script so evasive, it’s a puzzle why it’s included. (Franklin was evasive about her pregnancies at the ages of 12 and 14, though a posthumously discovered will identified the father of her first two children as Edward Jordon, after whom her second son was named.)
If trauma created geniuses, the world would be crawling with them. It’s condescending to think of Franklin as either a force of nature or victim of circumstance, rather than as an exceptional musician with a powerful instrument and a mastery of technique that could bring audiences to their feet or to tears.
That kind of talent must have been hard to bear, requiring constant hard work and creative choices. The idea that there was some easy biographical key to her art feels frankly, disrespectful.
Respect. Directed by Liesl Thomas. Written by Tracey Scott-Wilson. Starring: Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Marlon Wayans, Marc Maron, Saycon Sengbloh, Hailey Kilgore, Tituss Burgess, Audra McDonald, Albert Jones, Mary J. Blige. In theatres Friday, August 13.