Respect movie review: Aretha Franklin’s life in a sanitised, glossy packaging

2.5/5

Story:

The biographical drama charts the journey of the iconic Jazz performer Aretha Franklin right from her early days of singing in her father church choir to her meteoric rise to global stardom.

Review:

The idea of bringing one of the most influential figures of the 20th century is perhaps as exciting as it is daunting. The problem with Respect, debutant director Liesl Tommy’s biographical drama based on the life of legendary singer-songwriter Aretha Franklin, is that it is too reverential to be able to discover the humanity behind her towering persona.

We first meet Aretha as a 10-year-old (played by Skye Dakota Turner), grappling with the trauma of losing her mother and navigating her relationship with an overly protective and unyielding father, civil rights activist C.L. Franklin, essayed by Forest Whitaker. In between singing at parties and churches, while Aretha finds her voice, she also loses agency. She is born into a wealthy family, but her life is full of challenges. Her first son was born when Franklin was 12 years old. Her marriage to Ted White was physically and mentally corrosive, and she was frequently subjected to abuse.

Respect follows the template of an underdog movie to the T, where the odds are predictably stacked against her. Thus, from teen pregnancies, addiction, fraught relationships with father and husband, sexual abuse and condescending producers, Franklin’s trauma is treated with a sort of dramatisation that makes Aretha’s proverbial rise from the ashes, time after time, feel heroic, but not humane. In this regard, the film bowdlerises its dynamic subject matter to present a synthetic, acceptable version of her life.

Thus, even the dialogues are crafted to sound like declarations or pithy pearls of wisdom like “Don’t let nothing come between you and your music” or “Your daddy don’t own your voice, Re. The only one that owns it is God.”

It is only fitting then that the film concludes in 1972 with Franklin triumphantly recording the live gospel album Amazing Grace, the biggest selling gospel album of all time.

Barring the lack of realism in this film, everything else works in complete synergy. Jennifer Hudson immerses herself in the role but never attempts to mimic the icon. She is robust and utterly believable, embodying the larger-than-life persona of the Queen of Soul. When she performs every one of Franklin’s songs live, you cannot help but feel elated that Franklin herself had chosen Hudson for the part. Her presence in the film makes it a highly immersive story, misguided as it may be. The rest of the cast, including Whitaker, Marlon Wayan and Mary J Blige are appropriately convincing in their roles as CL Franklin, Ted White and Dinah Washington, respectively.

From the rich soundtrack featuring Hudson, Carole King and Jamie Hartman’s original number Here I am, to the cinematography by Kramer Morgenthau, there is no real grievance that one can have about the technical aspects of the movie.

Verdict: Respect does not really offer any insight into Aretha Franklin beyond what is available on the public domain. However, Jennifer Hudson’s enthralling presence ensures that the movie remains immensely watchable.