Respect an Uneven Look at Aretha Franklin

 

RESPECT (2021)

Directed by Liesl Tommy

United Artists, 145 minutes, PG-13

★★★

 

 

 

In 2009, an African American student in my class at Smith College asked me who sang “My Country t’is of Thee” at Barack Obama’s inauguration. It took me aback, but I had the presence of mind to ask her to YouTube more Aretha Franklin and read about her. Bless her heart, that’s exactly what she did and the “Queen of Soul” had a new young fan.

 

I tell this story because Respect is a bit like Franklin at Obama’s inauguration: a taste for those who know little about her. It won’t, however, tell them much. It lost money at the box office, but racism was not to blame. Like too many biopics in the “based upon” category, Respect tried to do too much, assumed too much, and relied too heavily on name recognition. It’s a decent movie, but ultimately a mid-pack pick.

 

The mature Aretha was played by Jennifer Hudson, Franklin’s own choice. As we see in the clip as the credits roll, she’s no Aretha, but who is? Hudson is about as close as it gets and deserves any kudos that come her way. The problem lies with Tracey Scott Wilson’s screenplay, which follows Franklin from 1952-72, when she recorded her best-selling record, the gospel album Amazing Grace. Twenty years isn’t a bad sweep for a biopic, but unless you know about Franklin’s life (or read up in advance), you’ll be lost in a welter of important-but-unexplained characters. For instance, at one point in the film a distraught Aretha calls upon her friend Sam.” That would be Sam Cooke (Kelvin Hair), who practically invented soul. Nor will you understand that when Aretha made Amazing Grace, “James” (Tituss Burgess) the minister comforting and accompanying her was James Cleveland, known as the “King of Gospel for reinventing the genre.

 

Respect is an odd film in several ways. There’s a lot about the dynamics between Aretha and her overbearing father, C. L. Franklin (Forest Whitaker), but it would have helped to state what is implied: that the Rev. Franklin was better at preaching than following the gospel. When we see Aretha pregnant at 12—and not by the man implied in the film–she was following C. L.’s footsteps; he impregnated at 12-year-old himself, plus two more before he married Barbara Siggers (Audra McDonald in a cameo), Aretha’s mother. On the positive side, the Rev. Franklin was an early civil rights activist, which is why famous people like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (Gilbert Glenn Brown) hung out at C. L.’s Detroit home.

 

And so it goes. We get wonderful performances from Hudson, the woefully underrated Whitaker, Marlon Wayans as Franklin’s abusive first husband Ted White, Saycon Sengbloh and Hailey Kilgore as Aretha’s sisters Emma and Carolyn, Mary J. Blige as the tempestuous Dinah Washington who loves Aretha but doesn’t want her stepping on her turf, and Marc Maron as the manic music producer Jerry Wexler who made Franklin into a star.  

 

The last point is crucial. Aside from C. L., Wexler, and White, most of the rest of the people are there because they were in Aretha’s orbit. Alas, they are more like wallpaper than foundations. Director Lisel Tommy too often allows her film to become an African-American version of A Star is Born. Yet, she is uncertain whether she is making a film for the cognoscenti or the newbies. The first, of course, already know Aretha was the Queen of Soul; the second–the bulk of ticket-buyers these days–don’t get enough information to know much more than Aretha switched from a small market gospel singer to a chartbuster when Wexler sent her to Muscle Shoals to record with a bunch of White backcountry good ole boys. (They were far more than that!)  Add lots of music–superbly done by Ms. Hudson–and we get a very long film that’s also part musical documentary.

 

Put another way, Respect is a trifurcated film, part psychological drama, part Star is Born, and part cover album. It’s too bad, because the acting is really topnotch. Forest Whitaker should have gotten a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod and Hudson should be singing the film’s title song, but Respect will be absent from the Oscars. Mid-pack films don’t generally get a lot of love when it comes to major awards. You can give it some, but educate yourself in advance.

 

Rob Weir