Amazing Grace (2019)

How Sweet the Sound
or
"Give the Technician a Big Hand for the Difficulties."

When Aretha Franklin died last year, there were the necessary tributes, necessary because one of THE great voices on Earth had been stilled and honor was due to what had been lost.

But, there was an intriguing bit of news on NPR when they did their reporting—there had been a film, a documentary, made in 1972 by Sydney Pollack that had never seen the light of day and that Franklin had repeatedly sued to block distribution of...had done so twice, evidently, and successfully.

What was in that documentary that Franklin wanted squelched, my mind began to wonder?

Really, I can't think of anything, having now seen it 47 years after it was made. Franklin comes off as nothing less than amazing, and, at times, mesmerizing. The film is a filmed recording of two nights that Franklin spent singing at the Watts New Temple Missionary Baptist Church recording the album that would be called "Amazing Grace," the best-selling live gospel recording of all time and Franklin's best-selling album in her career. It would be like watching a film of The Beatles making "Sgt. Peppers'" but instead of endless planning and re-takes (calculation), replacing it with inspiration and the power of vaulting faith...and doing it in one "take". Accompanied by the Rev. James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir—and Aretha's discreet house-band—she recorded the album, which, as dominating as she is, still feels like a community effort. There's brilliance on all sides of the performance.

Sydney Pollack was assigned to do the film and he set it up, Woodstock-style—lots of cameras (there is no attempt to hide the phalanx of cameramen running around, angling for shots) with a live audience. It's all grainy 16mm footage and just as rough-looking as everything coming out of 1972 looked. There are the rare flashes of end-rolls, the focus-on-the-fly-racking, and a perpetual shakiness and desperation to the shots. But, it's a faithful chronicle...and that first night. Man!

The performances are awe-inspiring, between Choir director Alexander Hamilton's almost telepathic leading of his singers to Cleveland's keyboard playing and the interactions between Franklin and the choir, there are moments of nearly ecstatic harmony culminating in a truly exceptional drawn-out version of "Amazing Grace" that sweeps the audience to their feet and causes Cleveland to vacate his piano-stand and move away, openly weeping at the sound, only to return to the stage and grasp Franklin's hand as she finishes the song.

Pollack may have been torn between his duties recording the performance and his instincts as a documentarian. His camera crews will abandon the players for long sections to record instances of audience reactions and concentrating on the faces of the choir-members as they get caught up in the music. There may be a little too much of that, as sometimes Franklin gets lost in the proceedings, so taken is Pollack's crew with recording reactions of a joyful, clapping, singing crowd swept away by the music flooding the church.

The second night is a bit different and somewhat less satisfying. Repeated material is left out, technical delays hold up the music, and the crowd a bit more rowdy and demonstrative. Pollack cuts away to too many shots of Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts in the audience and guests take away from the performances, including Franklin's father, Reverend C. L. Franklin, who at one point movingly gets on the stage and mops his daughters face mid-performance. But, one understands the pride and community that overwhelms performance. Stage-craft be damned in the House of the Lord—the needs of family become too much a temptation to resist, and it's a beautiful moment.

But, Franklin is inimitably Franklin and it is mesmerizing to watch her in this. She was always a great entertainer and song-stylist, but to see her get caught up in the religious fervor of her performance takes her work to a much higher plane, and it is often jaw-dropping to see her at one point under precise control and then let loose with rafter-shaking notes that you can feel in your bones...or your soul. Truly a wondrous artist.

Oh...and the delay? It seems that one can chalk this up to "technical difficulties" as nobody in post-production could sync up the film with the recordings...Pollack didn't use a clapperboard to mark takes as the songs were long and there were just too many cameras, and the footage just sat in a Warner vault until it could be transferred to digital media and only once speeds were set in 1's and 0's could they marry the recordings and the footage. Pollack died in 2008, and producer Alan Elliott supervised the assemblage, managing to finish it in 2011, only to have Franklin sue to prevent its release, ostensibly to maintain control over her image and likeness—especially in footage that had been severed from its earlier compensation deal. Evidently, she had seen the film before her death and there are conflicting opinions about her thoughts on it.

Personally, it's an essential film for anyone interested in gospel, Aretha, or music.

My favorite Aretha Franklin song (written by Morris Broadnax, Clarence Paul, and Stevie Wonder;
produced by Arif Mardin and Jerry Wexler, and arranged by Eumir Deodato)