How do you tell about the life of a pop icon? From the images that have burned themselves into the collective memory and from the people behind them, from the personal and artistic, sometimes also political struggles? Hollywood, it seems, almost always has the same answer to this. And it’s pretty boring.
The musician biopic has become a genre of its own. There are films about Ray Charles (“Ray”), Johnny Cash (“Walk the Line”), James Brown (“Get on Up”),) about the hip-hop pioneers of NWA (“Straight Outta Compton”) and lastly over Queen (“Bohemian Rhapsody”) and the rise of Elton John (“Rocketman”).
You don’t have to be a great music connoisseur to know how different these artists are. Even so, the films about her are almost eerily similar. There are always good exceptions (“I’m Not There”, “Control”, “Love & Mercy”), but musicians’ biographies are almost always evaporated on the screen to the same glossy formula of opulent equipment, prominent cast and one proven story arc in three acts (difficult childhood, then advancement and fame, then drugs and life crisis that is eventually overcome). These easily digestible pop fairy tales are even commercially rewarded – as in the case of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, which in 2018 became the most successful biopic to date with sales of more than $ 900 million.
Aretha Franklin was raped at the age of eleven, a trauma that is told here in a blurred manner
Enter Jennifer Hudson, who plays the soul singer Aretha Franklin, who died in 2018, in “Respect”. Their lives are actually good material for an exciting biopic. And director Liesl Tommy also asks the right questions: How did the Detroit girl who sang gospel in her father’s Baptist church become the “Queen of Soul”, whose warm, powerful singing in the best moments of the totality of all human emotions became a form seemed to lend?
The film then doesn’t take any chances with the answers. He tells of traumatic experiences, especially with regard to their relationship with men, without it ever getting really dark. Hollywood loves pathos. No experiments. Drama, yes, but no abysses. That bothers the nostalgia factor. And so “Respect” has basically become exactly what one expected or, let’s say, feared after the biopics mentioned above: a lavishly staged and well cast, very respectful portrait overloaded with symbolism and cleansed of controversy, despite two and a half hours The running time leaves little room for ambivalences or nuances.
One could have hoped for more from director Liesl Tommy. The director, who was born in South Africa at the time of apartheid, has made a name for herself with highly acclaimed, politically charged plays. On Broadway, she staged “Eclipsed” with Lupita Nyong’o about women in the Liberian civil war, for which she received – as the first black woman – a Tony nomination for best theater director. “Respect” is her feature film debut. After all, Tommy does without the well-known flashback structure and tells in strict chronological order about Aretha Franklin’s life and career.
Your film begins in 1952. Ten-year-old Aretha lives under the strict supervision of her father, Reverend CL Franklin (Forest Whitaker), charismatic preacher and heavyweight of the civil rights movement, in whose house musical and intellectual greats such as Martin Luther King, Mahalia Jackson and Duke Ellington come and go. The traumas of this childhood – the difficult relationship with the dominant father, a rape at the age of eleven that led to an unwanted pregnancy – are told, but seem strangely soft. It is similar later with the violent first husband. Or their experiences with the racism of the 1960s. In these scenes, the camera pays a particularly long time on Jennifer Hudson’s sad face. You don’t get a feeling for the real horror. The first half of the film is more likely to save Mary J. Blige with a flaming, extroverted appearance than Dinah Washington.
Musically, leading actress Jennifer Hudson can keep up well with Aretha Franklin.
(Photo: Quantrell D. Colbert / Universal / dpa)
The film then finds its groove in the music scenes. Liesl Tommy’s best decision is that there is more of it than in other biopics. “Respect” takes its time with the concert and studio scenes and traces in detail how Franklin, after frustrating Columbia years in New York, found her own sound when he switched to Jerry Wexler’s label Atlantic Records, which specializes in rhythm and blues. You can see and hear how “I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)”, the first hit single, is created together with the studio musicians. All of these scenes thrive on Jennifer Hudson’s impressive vocal performance. In these moments she gets close to Franklin.
But Hudson is a better singer than an actress. Her pouty embodiment of the character is less believable and often too striking. Cynthia Erivo in the miniseries “Genius: Aretha”, which was also released this year, did a much better job of doing this. Erivo didn’t sound like Franklin, but he got a better grasp of his resoluteness and self-assurance, which were at least as important as that insane voice.
In contrast to the film, the series did not enjoy the blessings of Franklin’s descendants – and of “Lady Soul” herself. Franklin had personally chosen Hudson for the role during his lifetime. That was back in 2007, after winning the Oscar for “Dreamgirls”. It is quite possible that Franklin and her family’s involvement did not do the film any good. “Respect” tells less about human existence, but manages the legend Aretha. After all, their music shines as brightly as ever.
Respect, USA 2021 – Director: Liesl Tommy. Book: Tracey Scott Wilson, Liesl Tommy. Camera: Kramer Morgenthau. Starring: Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Marlon Wayans, Mary J. Blige. Universal, 145 minutes. Theatrical release: November 25th, 2021.