GIVE A LITTLE RESPECT

QUEEN OF SOUL RELIVES LIFE ON SCREEN IN PORTRAITURE

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The life of the Queen of Soul gets put on display in the biopic, Respect (2021).

Jennifer Hudson stars as Aretha Franklin, with Forest Whitaker co-starring as the father of the world famous American singer.

Whitaker has the makeup department make him look a bit younger for the beginning of the film and then make up makes him look a bit older at the end of the film.

Sky Dakota Turner plays a young Aretha Franklin growing up in Detroit as a Baptist Minister’s daughter.

Director Liesl Tommy creates an interesting transition scene with Turner playing the young Aretha singing in the church becoming Hudson as the adult Aretha Franklin.

Tommy uses the camera well with close ups of the characters and some artist framing of scenes to develop the tone and atmosphere for the scenes and the film as a portrait of Black America.

Aretha is shown to be from a good Christian family with the same ups and downs experienced in every American household.

Tommy uses a rather linear narrative in the sense that the narrative only goes straight, although a bit sideways now and then. Instead of using intertwining parallel narratives or flashbacks, the life story is jolted about a bit by traumatic life events occurring within the narrative as it unfolds chronologically. Aretha’s mother dying changes the child’s narrative. Aretha’s relationship issues with her father sets her on a certain course of events. And the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. frees Aretha from a life of public service.

Parts of a Jimi Hendrix song in one scene underscores the year being depicted in the film.

The cinematography uses different lighting, such as candlelight and natural light entering a room though the windows, and the occasional flourishing of colours. But the portrait photographer is ever present from scene to scene.

Tommy also sparingly uses over exposed light to make scenes look like archived video instead of the dramatizations that the scenes are transitioning into.

The film is slowed and fragmented for one scene to show how the trauma of domestic violence causes one of those jarring life moments as the plot begins to reverse.

The biopic is essentially another ‘how the music was made’ genre film about famous singers and musicians.

The script falls flat a bit because the characters talk about demons in the house and going to that dark place, but the details of these situations are part of an untold backstory. The result is that the plot lacks intrigue and suspense.

Jennifer Hudson does a marvelous job acting and singing like Aretha Franklin. Aretha must abide by her father’s wishes until her music career all but falters. Hudson shows how Aretha then goes down a different path with the help of her fiancé. Eventually that relationship also becomes obvious to Aretha as too controlling. 

Forest Whitaker provides his usual excellent character acting in a supporting role, only this time with the confidence and arrogance of an ordained Baptist minister who rubs shoulders with Martin Luther King Jr. Whitaker shows how Franklin struggled to maintain control of his talented daughter but that he loved her unconditionally, despite his surprisingly short temper.

This treatment of Aretha Franklin’s legacy is interesting, but a narrative device and overall vision for the film are noticeably absent. The close-up portraiture could use a sub-plot in the background, and one in the foreground as well. One saving grace is that the focus of the film is not an addiction, as has been the case in other biopic films about singers and musicians. 

Respect however does still meet the demands of the biopic music genre by showing how the music was made and by having Hudson perform several of the hit songs as if she were Aretha Franklin.