Respect (12A.)
Directed by Liesl Tommy
Starring Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Marlon Wayans, Audra McDonald, Tituss Burgess and Marc Maron. In cinemas. 145 mins.
Being the Queen of Soul, a biopic of Aretha Franklin had to be made. But which biopic do you give her? Her music fused the earthy sensuality of R'n'B with the spiritual uplift of gospel and the struggle to reconcile these two factions is the consistent faultline running through the story but isn't enough to pin a story arc to. As Aretha grew up in an affluent Detroit suburb, the daughter of a nationally prominent preacher (Whitaker), who was able to open many doors for her in the music business, they couldn't do the rags-to-riches tale. But most other biopic formulas are given a go.
So partly it's the story of a woman learning to assert herself over dominating men: her hypocritical and manipulative father and her abusive first husband Teddy (Wayans.) Then there is her involvement in the civil rights movement, being a supporter and friend to first Martin Luther King and then Black Panther Angela Davis. And you've also got the conquering addiction story where she struggles with alcohol.
The film's problem is that none of these strands sustains. Teddy was a wrong'un but he wasn't Ike Turner; for a while she was a bit handy with the sauce but hardly Keith Richards. Respects takes a sensible chronological approach to the story as it tracks her life and career from her fifties childhood to the peak of her success in the early seventies, but it doesn't convincingly cover any of the various strands it introduces. For example, after MLK's assassination, she argues with her father about her support for Angela Davis. A few minutes later a news report says Davies has been arrested and Aretha makes a public statement of support. And that's all we get on that.
That it cannot fit her life into a neat little narrative probably makes this a more honest music biz biopic than most but does make you wonder why we need to spend nearly two and a half hours on it. There's seems to be a craze for musical films that take up the best part of two and a half hours without a proper story to tell- last week Annette, now this.
If you need a film about Aretha Franklin then this just about does the job: it is well put together and the performances are strong. Hudson is very appealing in the main role and to these ears does a very good job of replicating the great woman's voice. But this brings us to the inherent flaw of the music biz biopic, the Bootleg Beatles conundrum – why listen to someone pretending to be the great talent. They can't be as good as the originals; and if the impersonators are totally convincing, then what was so special about the originals in the first place.
Ultimately Hudson's efforts, which she must have been hoping would have aimed her at Oscar success, are blown out of the water after her final scenes when film runs footage of Aretha in her seventies (you can tell she's a pensioner because despite the bright lights she keeps her fur coat on) performing sensationally in front of Barack Obama and a selection of stuffed shirts at the Kennedy Centre Honours. It's an audience that has been primed to fawn but they do seem genuinely taken aback by her performance of Natural Woman at an age when most singers' voices are on the wain. It show how special she was but means Respect is a film whose high point is its closing credits.
Directed by Liesl Tommy
Starring Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Marlon Wayans, Audra McDonald, Tituss Burgess and Marc Maron. In cinemas. 145 mins.
Being the Queen of Soul, a biopic of Aretha Franklin had to be made. But which biopic do you give her? Her music fused the earthy sensuality of R'n'B with the spiritual uplift of gospel and the struggle to reconcile these two factions is the consistent faultline running through the story but isn't enough to pin a story arc to. As Aretha grew up in an affluent Detroit suburb, the daughter of a nationally prominent preacher (Whitaker), who was able to open many doors for her in the music business, they couldn't do the rags-to-riches tale. But most other biopic formulas are given a go.
So partly it's the story of a woman learning to assert herself over dominating men: her hypocritical and manipulative father and her abusive first husband Teddy (Wayans.) Then there is her involvement in the civil rights movement, being a supporter and friend to first Martin Luther King and then Black Panther Angela Davis. And you've also got the conquering addiction story where she struggles with alcohol.
The film's problem is that none of these strands sustains. Teddy was a wrong'un but he wasn't Ike Turner; for a while she was a bit handy with the sauce but hardly Keith Richards. Respects takes a sensible chronological approach to the story as it tracks her life and career from her fifties childhood to the peak of her success in the early seventies, but it doesn't convincingly cover any of the various strands it introduces. For example, after MLK's assassination, she argues with her father about her support for Angela Davis. A few minutes later a news report says Davies has been arrested and Aretha makes a public statement of support. And that's all we get on that.
That it cannot fit her life into a neat little narrative probably makes this a more honest music biz biopic than most but does make you wonder why we need to spend nearly two and a half hours on it. There's seems to be a craze for musical films that take up the best part of two and a half hours without a proper story to tell- last week Annette, now this.
If you need a film about Aretha Franklin then this just about does the job: it is well put together and the performances are strong. Hudson is very appealing in the main role and to these ears does a very good job of replicating the great woman's voice. But this brings us to the inherent flaw of the music biz biopic, the Bootleg Beatles conundrum – why listen to someone pretending to be the great talent. They can't be as good as the originals; and if the impersonators are totally convincing, then what was so special about the originals in the first place.
Ultimately Hudson's efforts, which she must have been hoping would have aimed her at Oscar success, are blown out of the water after her final scenes when film runs footage of Aretha in her seventies (you can tell she's a pensioner because despite the bright lights she keeps her fur coat on) performing sensationally in front of Barack Obama and a selection of stuffed shirts at the Kennedy Centre Honours. It's an audience that has been primed to fawn but they do seem genuinely taken aback by her performance of Natural Woman at an age when most singers' voices are on the wain. It show how special she was but means Respect is a film whose high point is its closing credits.
