Mark Reviews Movies: AMAZING GRACE (2019)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 11, 2019

Aretha Franklin walks into a church and sings. The next night, she does it again. That's all one needs to know about Amazing Grace, and conveniently, that is also everything that's required to say that this documentary is worth watching.

It's that simple, really, although the history and the actual experience of the film itself are a bit more complex. The documentary was intended to be released 47 years ago, in order to coincide with that year's release of Franklin's album of the same name. Sydney Pollack directed the footage we see, although a rather forgetful error meant that it was impossible to synchronize the sound with the imagery using editing technology at the time.

A lot has changed in the intervening decades, and the footage and soundtrack, passed along by Pollack to Alan Elliott, were finally reunited properly. Elliott oversaw this process, but he only gives himself a "realized by" credit on the final film, which seems like an unnecessarily humble way to give the ultimate credit to Pollack and, naturally, Franklin.

There's more to the history of the documentary's delayed release, most of it involving lawsuits started by Franklin herself. They had something to do with protecting her image, which is understandable enough, and after her death last year at the age of 76, Franklin's estate allowed the film to be presented to the public.

None of that comes up in the film itself, which only gives us a basic backdrop to the scenes that are about to unfold on two nights in January of 1972. At the time, Franklin had won multiple awards and had even more songs become hits. She was a bona fide star.

The plan for her next album was a collection of gospel songs, to be performed in the only logical place to sing them and in front of a live audience, who are encouraged to make their presence known for the microphones. Accompanying Franklin would be her five-piece band and the Southern California Community Choir, along with its founder Rev. James Cleveland. That two-night recording session/concert is what Pollack and his crew captured, and it's what Elliott, whom we might as well call the film's co-director for finally putting the film together, presents in this documentary.

Knowing Franklin's star power at the time, the initial imagery is a little confounding. Before the woman with, as Cleveland puts it, many titles, which Cleveland goes on to say are all deserved but unnecessary for an introduction, even arrives inside the church, one will note that the pews of the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles are maybe about halfway filled. One imagines that the publicity for this event must have been minimal to the point of near non-existence. If word spread wide of Franklin's plan, the church would be full with a line out the door, down the block, and around the corner for who knows how long.

Word obviously did get out for the second night, when the church is filled. Franklin's father, an ordained minister, is there for the second session, and so, too, is Mick Jagger, who sits in the back corner of the church—probably so nobody would notice him. A few songs in, Jagger has moved to the first pew, because if you're famous enough to get a front-row seat for an Aretha Franklin show without any notice, you take the opportunity. Nobody would be paying attention to him anyway.

What's fascinating about the distinction between these two nights is that we get to see two sides of Franklin. On the first night, with a smaller crowd and the pre-stated expectations that this is a recording session, the singer walks down the aisle, after a song and procession by the choir, in a sparkling, ivory dress. She doesn't acknowledge the crowd as she walks directly to the piano in front. When she sings, it's mostly with her eyes closed—even more so than in other public performances of hers one may have seen.

This is Franklin the professional, undistracted by the lights, which make Franklin sweat as if it's a summer day in L.A., or the cameras or the audience. Her singing technique, although as dynamic in its range and its timbre as you'd expect from, is particularly refined. Just listen to the way she vocalizes the first letter in the first word of "Amazing Grace," and try to argue that Franklin's gift was anything less than extraordinary.

This night, first and foremost, is a recording session. The difference between that and a concert is pretty straightforward. The singing in a recording session is to the microphone for a listener at some unknown time in the future. The singing for a concert is through the microphone for an audience that is right there, feeding off of the performer's energy and giving their own energy right back to the singer.

On the second night, with that full house, we get a concert. The entire tenor of the church changes. Franklin seems much more relaxed, much freer to improvise with Cleveland when it's his turn to sing, and much more emotionally invested in the music. That's not to say she isn't invested during the first night, but with one of her major musical influences and her father and people carried off their feet by the spirit of song in the crowd, we're watching Franklin as a performer—not just as a singer.

That's a gift—to be able to see these two sides of Franklin so clearly juxtaposed. Amazing Grace does little more than capture a performance, but in doing so with such clarity, it gives us a better, in-the-moment appreciation for its star as an artist.

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