‘Respect,’ an Overlong Aretha biopic, Leaves So Much Out

An elderly Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, decked out in mink over a cream fishtail dress, sings the words Carole King wrote: "You make me feel like a natural woman." At 74, even the remnants of his once otherworldly voice - a cascade of hard-hitting notes backed by immeasurable spirit - are enough to leave audience members Barack and Michelle Obama under his spell. Franklin stands up and drops his coat to the ground. She belts. She screams. She unleashes a vocal torrent so strong that it brings the house down.

The rousing footage, captured on the night of the 2016 Kennedy Center Honors, isn't exactly part of director Liesl Tommy's feature debut. I respect, too long a biopic about Franklin's life. Rather, it is played during the film's ending credits as a montage of photos depicting the singer's many triumphs (gold records, Grammy Awards, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, her performance at Obama's inauguration). The previous two hours or more of this 145-minute effort Tommy's threadbare hodgepodge of bad impressions, free movies, and even worse descriptions of mental health, isn't even a shadow of the true natural woman.

This film does not deal with Franklin beyond his successes and reduces his lived years to marked boxes. As a standard, and therefore superficial, musical biopic, it is more interested in dropping beats than finding depth. It begins in Detroit in 1952. Aretha, 10, is woken up by her father, the Reverend CL Franklin (Forest Whitaker), to sing to some guests, including Dinah Washington (Mary J Blige), Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington. , whom Ree (family and friends call her that) greets as aunts and uncles. At her home, the young woman testifies to the personal lives of men and women who go to church with flashes of weirdness, as one man slides his hand around the waist of another. Singing, dancing, playing the piano, she covers Fitzgerald's “My Baby Like to Bebop” with an advanced stage presence.

Unlike his immense voice, Franklin's childhood is far from perfect in I respect. She is raped during her father's party (we never found out the identity of the rapist). At the age of 12 she becomes pregnant (we never know the child's name). Her father, a womanizing and controlling figure, forces her to sing in church under the pretext of pleasing the Lord. His mother dies suddenly (we are never told of what). These early tribulations are meant to contextualize Franklin's later problems with alcoholism, violent men, and "the devil," a euphemism used by his family to describe his bipolar disorder. Similar to Lee Daniels United States vs. Billie Holiday, the I respect screenplay, co-written by Tracey Scott Wilson (The Americans, Fosse / Verdon), uses trauma proficiently to create hollow melodramatic arcs.

As the adult Franklin, Jennifer Hudson is a notable improvement over the performance given by the misunderstood Cynthia Erivo in National Geographic. Genius. Hudson's great voice and propensity for extended gospel make her a more than decent understudy. However, his presence is lacking. Her character is caught between two worlds: pleasing her father, that is, becoming a Black Judy Garland, speaking with precise diction, being a role model for her race, and achieving success, that is, becoming independent from him. There's also an infighting in Hudson - he can't decide whether to inject his own personality into the story or just impersonate Franklin.

Hudson's actors operate on different pages. Marlon Wayans plays Ted White, Franklin's first abusive and controlling husband. With his felt hat tipped over his shoulders in a long coat and whispering determined flirtations, he's a cross between Lyle Bettger's Dutch Heineman in All i wish and Humphrey Bogart's Harry Dawes in The barefoot countess. But Wayans does not come close to reaching the heights of those who preceded it. Franklin is supposed to be attracted to White like a bee to a honeycomb. That's a problem because Hudson and Wayans' chemistry is non-existent, in part due to White's equally non-existent backstory. Whitaker's accent changes wildly without warning. Tituss Burgess as James Cleveland is based on thick mimicry, playing closer to a cartoon than a real person. Even Marc Maron as famed record producer Jerry Wexler can't get a foothold in this bloated image. The script does not provide an emotional center; the ship is sinking and everyone is grabbing their own lifeboat towards shore.

The two draws for I respect - designer Clint Ramos' resplendent suits and a bevy of hits aren't enough to cover the film's thin story. It alludes to the singer's children, whom you hardly see and who you certainly never know about (one wonders if the filmmakers see motherhood as a mere fragment of Franklin's life). The icon is portrayed as a civil rights activist (she was), but the movie does not represent her activism. He has the gall to invoke the name of Angela Davis without explaining his politics. Recordings of crowd-pleasing tracks like “I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)” and “Respect” arrive in the overnight family package. And while Franklin's admirers flatter her, the lens is indifferent to Hudson. The dry lighting of cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau (Creed ii) dims the inherent shine of black skin to ash.

Above all, it is inconceivable how little consideration is given to the singer's mental health. After Franklin goes on a vicious spree during which family and friends can barely catch up, she magically emerges thanks to the appearance of her mother's ghost. Bipolar disorder is not treated by ghosts. It is a long journey, one that Tommy is unwilling to show. A problem with both I respect Y Genius it is the immensity of the icon's life. His search for his own sound, his role in the civil rights movement, his marriages, his childhood, his relationships with his father and little-known sisters, the recording of the record-breaking gospel album. Amazing grace - they could easily make up the plots of various movies. By smashing them together, Tommy takes shortcuts that ultimately undermine his theme. This approach can satisfy those who want to enjoy Franklin's music. But if that's where the hunger lies, I'd suggest they play their records instead. They are more heartfelt and heartwarming than this movie could be.