What do you do when the best movie that’s been released on the subject — one that will shape the visual stylings of nearly every fictional portrayal of the real-life person whose story you’re adapting — hits screens years before you’re able to start production? If you’re like Lisel Tommy’s Aretha Franklin biopic Respect, you structure your whole film around a lengthy tribute to that film, which, of course, is Allan Elliott and Sydney Pollack’s Amazing Grace. This is a somewhat ironic choice, given the Franklin estate’s rubber-stamp on this particular film and the actual star’s repeated attempts to prevent that film, comprised of footage of her recording sessions for the 1972 record of the same name, from ever seeing the light of day. Much like Bohemian Rhapsody, though, it falls into the same trap of simply replicating iconic performances — this time, at least, performed well by Jennifer Hudson, who sings her own tunes and isn’t saddled with false horse teeth — rather than doing anything interesting or meaningful with the icon at the film’s center. Instead, Respect follows the well-trod formula so thoroughly skewered by Walk Hard nearly 15 years ago (Jesus Christ) and, despite whatever meager pleasures that formula offers, it can’t overcome its flaws.
Back to Amazing Grace for a second. Admittedly, that album’s recording is a natural endpoint for Respect, given how naturally it represents the film’s thesis. Much like how Ray Charles brought aspects of Country into the repertoire, Franklin represented the synthesis of the then-modern sounds of Soul and R&B with its explicit Gospel roots. Nowhere is this better evidenced than in the film’s opening, when young Aretha wanders around a party hosted by her father (Forest Whitaker), a well-connected Detroit preacher who would manage the singer’s early career while also working with Martin Luther King, Jr. within the Civil Rights Movement, and it’s a who’s who of incredible musicians and singers — Sam Cooke, Dinah Washington (Mary J. Blige doing a swell diva performance), Clara Ward, Duke Ellington — just milling about, bantering, enjoying cigarettes, liquor, and each other’s company. She then astounds the room with her natural talent, and it becomes clear that this environment created the kind of fertile soil from which the Godmother of Soul would emerge, and would provide her with the ability to cross over between what was believed to be incongruous genres, at least by the money men at the record companies. And what a person she grew into, captured well by Hudson, whose voice and screen presence comes very close to evoking Franklin at the peak of her powers, though I can’t imagine anyone wanting to buy the soundtrack album of this instead of, say, Amazing Grace.
However, it wasn’t an easy road to get to that point, and it’s where Respect really starts to follow the biopic blueprint. Franklin’s life had a great deal of tragedy in it — her mother died at an early age, she was assaulted by a family friend as a child, and would, in her prime, endure marriage to a mercurial megalomaniac named Ted White (Marlon Wayans), who, as her “manager,” would demand credit on all her biggest hits when she finally made it after years of struggle — but the film never finds a compelling perspective to look at how these events affected her and her music. Her “dark night of the soul” comes near the film’s third act, where Hudson lashes out at her character’s family and friends and descends into drunken nighttime depressions, where she removes her wig and cries at God to heal her, but it’s never enough to overcome that sensation of deja vu one gets when they feel like they’ve seen something done better elsewhere. In this case, that film is Ray, from which Respect cribs its best moments and much of its structure, with the famous “What’d I Say” scene echoed when Aretha finally heads down to Muscle Shoals at the urging of her new record company partner Jerry Wexler (Marc Maron) and concocts “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” with the Rhythm Section. The same also applies to the genesis of “Respect,” which is crafted one late night at the piano by Franklin and her sisters over White’s objections that it’s “Otis’ song.” We like to watch the alchemy of creation — the formation of the recognizably genius from mundane elements hanging in the air — and it will always be somewhat satisfying, but it’s missing the impact that makes it truly memorable.
Perhaps it comes from the fact that the Estate did participate so much in the film, and it’s hard to make compelling drama when one is concerned with saving some amount of face or preserving one’s dignity, much as one would at a wake. No one involved with Respect really wants to delve in deeper to find the meaning in her rise or to really depict the pain and suffering behind it as well — it is a tribute, not a cover, after all. Yet good films can thread that needle, as Get On Up proved a few years ago (if you came away from that with the impression that James Brown was an easy dude to be around, well, I don’t know what movie you watched), which was able to walk the line between depicting one’s genius and the terror that often underwrote it. Or you go abstract, much as I’m Not There did, and consider the image of the icon rather than the meat-and-potato minutiae of their lives. On the other hand, it seems that the best way for certain artists’ legacies to be considered on-screen is through a fictional lens: It’s why most Bowie biopics (and I am sure there will be dozens of them left to come in the following years) will never come close to equalling Velvet Goldmine as an explanation of what exactly the man and others like him represented for the folks of that era. Maybe that’s the lens from which we should craft some tributes — open acknowledgments of influence that manage to preserve what made these artists so iconic and special to many but that also allow writers, directors, and performers the leeway to make a compelling drama in the process. But knowing that folks just simply want to see cover bands sometimes and hear someone play the hits, all I can really say is that those folks will probably have a decent time with Respect, but like any cover band, it just can’t compare to the real thing.