Respect (Movie)

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    Aretha Franklin and the Futility of Trying to Portray Her Onscreen

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    The new film “Respect” is one of three recent attempts to understand the artist. Only the one that focuses solely on her music comes close.Early on in “Respect,” the latest onscreen retelling of Aretha Franklin’s story, the aging jazz and R&B star Dinah Washington asks her protégée, “Child, are you ever going to tell us who the daddy is?”Otherwise timid or thankful, Franklin (Jennifer Hudson) responds to Washington’s probing about the paternity of her sons, the first born when she was only 12, with a mix of incredulity and imposing silence. Suddenly what starts off as one of the film’s main mysteries and perhaps Franklin’s biggest childhood trauma ends up as a throwaway line, never to be revisited again.Instead, “Respect,” the debut film by the renowned theater director Liesl Tommy, ends up heeding the advice Washington gives Franklin about her music: “Honey, find the songs that move you.” The biopic is less a movie about Franklin’s interior life or the origins of what her character insists are the “demons” that haunt her, and more about how she as a prodigious vocalist and brilliant pianist and songwriter channeled her pain into songs that moved not just her, but the entire world. In the end, those gaps in the plot are distracting and keep Franklin at arm’s length, rendering her as elusive on the screen as she was in public in real life.A musical moment from “Respect,” with, from left, Henry Riggs, Jennifer Hudson, Hailey Kilgore, Saycon Sengbloh, Alec Barnes, John Giorgio, Marc Maron and Joe Knezevich.Quantrell D. Colbert/MGM“Respect” is part of a larger trend of films and TV series — including the National Geographic mini-series “Genius: Aretha,” starring Cynthia Erivo, and the Sydney Pollack documentary “Amazing Grace” (filmed in 1972 but released in 2018) — that all try to capture Franklin’s virtuosity. In their own way and to varying degrees of success, each struggles with how best to showcase her as a singular artist while expanding our understanding of a woman so intent on privacy.The upside of “Respect” is that it truly focuses on the intricacies of her music-making. The most riveting scenes are when we see her really play: in a recording studio turned jam session with the all-white Muscle Shoals band in Alabama, turning a sleepy “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” into a sultry, soulful confession. Or when she wakes up her sisters, Erma (Saycon Sengbloh) and Carolyn (Hailey Kilgore) in the middle of the night to rearrange the Otis Redding classic “Respect,” with her siblings adding the famous “Re-re-re” riff and forever transforming the song into a Black woman’s anthem.Given how electrifying those moments were, I found myself wanting more and more music, a feat achieved by Hudson’s own riveting take on Franklin’s classics as well as my memory of hearing Franklin’s powerhouse voice for the first time. In this sense, “Respect” gives us the biopic I always thought I was looking for — a portrait of a Black woman whose musical genius remains front and center without being sidelined or overshadowed by her personal struggle with trauma. Though the movie does show Aretha battling depression or her husband, Ted White, such agony never overtakes the story or our sense of her musicality the way it does in other biopics about iconic Black women performers, like Billie Holiday or Tina Turner. Instead, “Respect” treats trauma as a string of unresolved secrets, the source of which neither the film nor Franklin herself ever felt compelled to share with her audience.Hudson with Forest Whitaker as Franklin’s father in “Respect.”Quantrell D. Colbert/MGMThe result is a movie that skews too closely to Franklin’s own self-image, a narrative that she tightly controlled during her lifetime as a matter of privacy and as a way to assert her own power in an industry, and country, dominated by sexist and racist stereotypes about Black women’s sexuality and intelligence.The biographer David Ritz wrote of this distance in “Respect,” his second book on Franklin, saying, “In spite of my determination to be a compassionate listener, someone whose gentle persistence would allow her to reveal all her sacred secrets, my technique ultimately did not work. In the end, I didn’t make a dent in her armor.”Further reflecting on his first biography, “Aretha: From These Roots,” which he wrote based on interviews with Franklin, and which thus had her blessing, he said, “She got the book she wanted. To this day, Aretha considers her book an accurate portrait.”Franklin’s imprint is all over the film “Respect” as well. She handpicked Hudson, a move that set music as the center of the movie but risked the appearance that Hudson’s depiction might be too dependent on Franklin’s own self-image. In other words, as good as the music sounds (and it sounds soooooo very, very good), the plot holes about her past, which seemed to inform much of her character’s decision-making, kept nagging at me as I watched.Why did her mother, Barbara (Audra McDonald), leave her children behind with her domineering husband, the Rev. C.L. Franklin (Forest Whitaker), only to show up, after her death, as an angelic force in Aretha’s life?Why doesn’t Aretha remember having to rush to the roof and sing loudly with her sisters as children in order to drown out her parents fighting?And what is the shame the film keeps hinting at, but, like Aretha, never wants to confront?What does she need music to save her from?In one notable scene in “Respect,” her friend the Rev. James Cleveland says to Aretha, “There are no demons. Just the pain you’ve been running from your whole life.” Reassuring her more, Cleveland notes, “He knows it wasn’t your fault.”Cynthia Erivo as the singer in “Genius: Aretha.”Richard Ducree/National GeographicAnd because we aren’t quite sure if he is referring to her pregnancy, her mother’s departure or something else, we applaud Aretha’s catharsis while wondering about the cause.The mini-series “Genius: Aretha,” written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, however, is more forthcoming. By showing a young Aretha as the victim of sexual assault and attributing her parents’ breakup to her father’s own impregnating of a 12-year-old girl in his congregation, potential explanations of her childhood trauma are revealed but do not dominate its depiction.But even in this version, Aretha is a somewhat muted presence, and Erivo (a powerhouse vocalist herself) sometimes seems constrained by the need to toggle back and forth between Franklin’s introverted nature at home and her iconic status onstage.A scene from the documentary “Amazing Grace,” which the singer didn’t want released.Amazing Grace Film, LLCMaybe this is why I still find myself obsessed with the one movie that she never wanted to be seen onscreen: the documentary “Amazing Grace.” Filmed ​​by Pollack over two nights in a Los Angeles Baptist church in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Watts, “Amazing Grace” is all gospel, a cinematic capturing of spiritual ecstasy and religious exaltation, and a Franklin who surrenders her voice to God, and is at her most sublime.Dismissing the documentary in 1999 in her memoir, she told Ritz, “When I saw what had been done in one section of the film, I was appalled.” She went on, referring to the gospel singer Clara Ward, “One of the cameramen kept shooting straight up underneath Clara’s dress. She was in the front row. Talk about bad taste!” (Franklin would later say her aversion to its release had nothing to do with its content, which she claimed to have “loved.”) Her disdain for the project led her to sue repeatedly to block its release, though it finally found its way to theaters a few months after her death in 2018.This is perhaps why both “Respect” and “Genius: Aretha” felt compelled to include Pollack’s shoot in their narratives. For “Amazing Grace” had the privilege of giving us Franklin on her own musical terms without having to contend with the singer’s self-portrait. And in that freedom, it was able to share itself as one of Franklin’s best kept secrets. More

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      How Jennifer Hudson Prepared to Play Aretha Franklin

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      For the new biopic “Respect,” the singer researched the life of a yearslong friend and role model to better understand the circumstances that shaped her.Jennifer Hudson had plenty of time to think about how to portray Aretha Franklin onscreen. In 2007, soon after Hudson won the Academy Award for best supporting actress — for playing a girl-group singer in “Dreamgirls” — Franklin told Hudson she should play her in a biopic, starting a decade-long friendship filled with weekly conversations. Like Franklin, Hudson grew up singing in church, and she has poured gospel virtuosity into pop songs. And like Franklin, whose mother died at 34 of a heart attack, Hudson experienced sudden, devastating loss: her mother, brother and nephew were murdered in Chicago in 2008. In her career, Hudson has repeatedly paid tribute to Franklin, from using a Franklin song for her “American Idol” audition in 2004 to singing “Amazing Grace” at Franklin’s funeral in 2018. Now, Hudson is playing Franklin in the biopic “Respect” that comes to theaters this week.“Every artist, every musician, you’ve got to cross paths with Aretha, especially if you want to be great,” Hudson said in a video interview from Chicago, where she lives; her gray cat, Macavity, prowled in the background. “She’s always been present in my life in some form, even when I didn’t know it.”As Hudson explained the choices that went into her performance, she said that through the movie, she came to understand just how much of a “blueprint” Franklin was. “Our church music was based solely on her. The ‘Amazing Grace’ that I grew up singing in church came from her ‘Amazing Grace’ album. I didn’t realize that until we were doing research on the film.”Hudson, 39, is both the star and an executive producer of “Respect.” The film chronicles Franklin’s life from her childhood — as a vocal prodigy singing in church alongside her father, the eminent Reverend Clarence L. Franklin — through her pregnancy at 12, her frustrating years singing jazz standards at Columbia Records, her triumphant emergence as the Queen of Soul at Atlantic Records, and the pressures and drinking that threatened all she had achieved. Its story concludes in 1972 with Franklin reclaiming her church heritage to record her landmark live gospel album, “Amazing Grace.”Hudson as Aretha Franklin opposite Tituss Burgess in “Respect.”Quantrell D. Colbert/MGM“Respect” is the first film directed by Liesl Tommy, who was born in South Africa under apartheid and has worked extensively in theater, directing reconceptualized classics and politically charged new plays like “Eclipsed,” about women during the civil war in Liberia. (She was nominated for a best director Tony for that production.) To write the screenplay for “Respect,” Tommy brought in the playwright Tracey Scott Wilson, whose grandfather was a preacher.“When I pitched my idea of the film,” Tommy said by telephone from Los Angeles, “it was that it should start in the church and end in the church. The theme of the film was the woman with the greatest voice on earth, struggling to find her voice. I wanted to know how a person sings with such emotional intensity.“A lot of people have brilliant voices,” she continued, “but she’s the only one who delivers songs the way she does. I don’t think you become the Queen of Soul if you have an easy ride. There was a lived experience that allowed her to sing like that.”Franklin was celebrated anew after her death in 2018. The long-shelved concert film made when she recorded the “Amazing Grace” album was finally released that year. And National Geographic devoted a full season of its television series “Genius” to Franklin, with Cynthia Erivo in the title role. “Aretha Franklin lived a life where there’s room for many, many versions of many stories about her,” Tommy said. “She deserves that.”“Respect” juxtaposes the personal and political currents of Franklin’s career: forging a feminist anthem with “Respect” while grappling with an abusive husband, appearing regularly with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while supporting controversial figures like the Black Power activist Angela Davis. One of the rawest scenes involves Franklin singing at King’s funeral. “Imagine being Aretha Franklin in that era and Dr. King, whom she was so close to, being assassinated,” Hudson said. “Imagine the suffering and the pain she was going through. But in her position, she still had to be that person to be the light in such a dark time. That’s hard.”Though Hudson had spoken regularly with Franklin, she still had to conduct research: “Aretha wasn’t a person who verbalized too much unless it was through music.”Bethany Mollenkof for The New York TimesStill, Hudson and Tommy were determined to place Franklin’s music at the center of the film. “Everybody is, like, ‘We’ve never seen a biopic with this much music, where you get to hear the songs,’” Hudson said. “This is not a musical. It’s a biopic about artists, musicians. But I can’t think of any biopic or musical that has been done this way.”As executive producer, Hudson said, “I wanted to make sure the right songs were in the film. I wanted ‘Ain’t No Way.’ If I’m just an actor, I don’t really get a say, but with this, it’s like, ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t do this unless “Ain’t No Way” is a part of it.’”In an extended recording-studio sequence, Aretha’s sisters, Carolyn and Erma Franklin, sing all the backup vocals — not Cissy Houston, whose wordless soprano counterpoint transfigures the song. “That is part of artistic license,” Tommy said. “You can only have so many characters. You have to keep it focused.”To create immediacy, Hudson delivered Franklin’s onstage performances by singing live on camera — not lip-syncing, not dubbing in vocals afterward. “I wanted to experience it as she did in her life,” Hudson said. “Whatever we were re-enacting and recreating that she did in her life, if it was live, it’s like, ‘Well, let’s do it live.’ ‘Amazing Grace’ was live. ‘Ain’t No Way’ was live. ‘Natural Woman,’ we’re going to sing it live. So it could be authentic to what really was in her life.”Franklin was an accomplished gospel pianist as well as a singer, skills forged in her childhood in the church. Her early, commercially unsuccessful albums for Columbia backed her with celebrated jazz musicians and elaborate orchestral arrangements. It was elegant but in the 1960s, it was already old-fashioned.Hudson — with Marc Maron, left, and Marlon Wayans — learned to play piano for “Respect.” Quantrell D. Colbert/MGMHer return to the piano was one catalyst for her indelible Atlantic hits, defining the groove with churchy foundations and building a visceral call-and-response between her fingers and her voice. Hudson, after a career of working solely as a singer, set out to learn piano. “It was an actor’s choice to say ‘I cannot play Aretha Franklin without learning some element of the piano,’” Hudson said. “And now, when I’m learning music, I no longer just look at the top line, the melody line, the singing line. I’m considering it as an arranger. What key is that in? What is the progression?”Hudson also pondered how to reinterpret Franklin’s songs. Their voices are different: Hudson’s is higher and clearer, Franklin’s bluesier and grittier, and Hudson wanted to emulate Franklin without copying her. “I was using her approach, just allowing whatever that influence is that she’s had on me to come through, while using her inflections and different nuances,” Hudson said. “It was more about the feeling than matching the notes.”Despite their years of conversations, Hudson still had to research Franklin. “Aretha wasn’t a person who verbalized too much unless it was through music,” she said. “I know from my experiences of being around her, I used to be like, I can’t really tell where I stand. She didn’t give you much.” So Hudson set out to understand the era in which she grew up and other circumstances to get a sense of what it was like to be a woman then. “It wasn’t for me until literally in the middle of scenes that I realized, the things she had been saying to me, she was speaking from experience. Her greatest expression was through her music — and that was real.” More

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      ‘Respect’ Review: Giving Aretha Franklin Her Propers

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      Jennifer Hudson plays Aretha Franklin in a movie that follows many of the usual biographical beats but finds its own groove.Ray Charles said that Aretha Franklin “sang from her inners.” For her father, C.L. Franklin, she was “a stone singer.” That’s a good description for a great singer whose voice did something that even some brilliant, technically virtuosic vocalists can’t do. When Franklin was at her most sublime, her voice seemed to give shape to the entirety of human feeling — to the joy and the despair — so much so that it seemed as if she were birthing a twinned version of herself with each breath and soul-stirring note.The new drama “Respect” is a march-of-time fictionalization of Franklin’s life. Attractively cast and handsomely mounted — Jennifer Hudson plays the queen — it is a solid, sanitized, unfailingly polite portrait. It conforms to the familiar biopic arc: the artist begins humbly; reaches towering heights (artistic, commercial, maybe both); suffers a setback (bad lovers, addiction); only to rise higher still. In album titles, the movie flows to the beat of Franklin’s discography from “The Electrifying Aretha Franklin” to “Laughing on the Outside,” “Spirit in the Dark” and “Get It Right.”Taken as a whole, the movie — directed by Liesl Tommy from a script by Tracey Scott Wilson — doesn’t hold you firmly, though it has its moments. First, it has to dispatch with the standard preliminaries, including Aretha’s childhood, with its crackling tensions and cautiously muted torments. It’s a story that’s been told before, including by the Franklin biographer David Ritz. Here that life is often in soft focus, and generally sprinkled with tears rather than drenched. Even so, it is catnip to watch the young Aretha (Skye Dakota Turner) wander her family’s house late at night, smiling and hailing partygoers she calls out to as “Uncle Duke” (as in Ellington) and “Aunt Ella” (Ms. Fitzgerald to we mortals).Tommy, a theater director making her feature film debut, handles the material and its many moving parts with assurance. “Respect” opens in Detroit in 1952, where the young Aretha is living with her siblings under the stern eye of their father, C.L. (Forest Whitaker). A legendary Baptist minister and friend to Martin Luther King Jr. (Gilbert Glenn Brown), C.L. lords over his house with imposing hauteur and an unpredictable temper. Also sternly minding the brood is his mother (Kimberly Scott), who’s helping raise the children. Their mother, Barbara (Audra McDonald), a saintly figure in amber, has split from her husband and lives elsewhere, and clearly has Aretha’s heart.Everyone and everything in “Respect” looks good if not too movie-perfect. The rooms seem lived in and the people feel real, none more so than Mary J. Blige, who, as Dinah Washington, briefly sets the movie ablaze. Oddly, a showdown between Aretha and Dinah is borrowed from a confrontation Washington had with Etta James. Perhaps that was to give the movie juice, because otherwise the first chunk slides into the sluggish and dutiful. A distinct exception is a shocking, dimly lit image of the young Aretha that made me gasp. It’s a simple, devastating vision of trauma that lingers even as the story motors on and continues to hit the biographical markers: Hello, Jerry Wexler (Marc Maron).“Respect” succeeds in doing exactly what is expected of it. You may argue with this or that filmmaking choice and regret its overly smooth edges, but it does give you a sense of Franklin as a historical figure, a crossover success story and a full-throttle, fur-draped diva. (As a mother, she remains M.I.A.) Mostly, it gives you her music, with its passion and power, lyricism and schmaltz. Long after they fell off the charts, these are songs that light you up — with feelings, memories — when you hear them. You sing along with them in your head and, after the credits roll, you keep on singing (and murdering) them.A line in one of Ritz’s books on Franklin sheds light on the challenges of transposing her complicated life to the screen. “The pain stayed silent in all areas except music, where, magnificently,” Ritz wrote, “it formed a voice that said it all.” The movie has a tough time handling this quiet, and even when Hudson takes over, the character remains frustratingly vague. She’s misty rather than mysterious, maybe because for too long she is drifting along rather than steering her own course. When she walks into Columbia Records, escorted by her father, she is an unanswered question; the puzzlement only deepens when C.L. orders Aretha to stand up and twirl for a surprised record executive.Things vastly improve once the adult Aretha sits down with some session players and starts pulling apart the songs she will rebuild, discovering “her true voice,” as Franklin’s sister Carolyn (Hailey Kilgore) once put it. Hudson is a deeply appealing screen presence, and it’s a pleasure to watch her just walk into a room. She doesn’t look or sound like Franklin, but she manages the role confidently and with a pure singing voice that more than holds its own. She never feels possessed by Aretha, even when she’s making you rhythmically sway in your seat. Yet Hudson also manages what memorable singers do: she transports you, pulling you alongside her as she takes you up, up and away.Hudson with Marc Maron, who plays the record producer Jerry Wexler.Quantrell D. Colbert/Metro Goldwyn MayerThat’s a nice place to be (and to feel), even intermittently, because it’s then that Aretha Franklin flickers before you. She died in 2018 at 76 and her life was filled with agonies that the movie seems anxious to attenuate or ignore, as if the depth of her pain and its rawness might tarnish her legacy. That’s too bad but it doesn’t damage this movie, which finds an enjoyable groove as Aretha falters and triumphs anew. In the end, it is the music and your love for her that keeps you going and watching. With their hooks and oceans of feeling, Franklin’s songs worked on you and worked you over. They entered our bodies and souls, our cultural and personal DNA, becoming part of the soundtrack for our lives.RespectRated PG-13 for language, violence and child pregnancy. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes. In theaters. More