Soundtracking: Amazing Grace

by Chris Feil

In the year and change since Aretha Franklin has passed, it feels as if she never left, much as it often does when an artist’s legacy feels as eternal as hers. It’s not just that the Aretha songbook has remained as omnipresent in our culture as ever, but her place remained as cemented this year with the successful release of Amazing Grace. The concert doc captures the live recording of Franklin’s highest selling album of the same name, her first that was fully in the gospel genre that fostered her otherworldly gift. But perhaps what made the film feel even more special in the months after her death isn’t just the opportunity to witness her at peak powers, but also to see fragments of a more personal side revealed.

And we had been waiting some time to see it. Originally a sound snafu kept the film out of sync from the audio and unsalvageable for 70s audiences, leaving Sydney Pollack’s footage to lay dormant in a vault. Modern technology brought a digital solution in the past few years, but Franklin kept the film from exhibition at several film festivals. But with rights issues cleared up since, the timing feels like its own kind of reward for fans. A long-awaited, up-close glimpse at one of our most essential artists creating one of their most integral texts to their artistic identity. It doesn’t disappoint.

It's easy to simply get lost in Franklin’s extended performance while watching the film, like holding something precious in your hands to keep it from flying away. When she marches into the sanctuary of the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church and begins with “Wholy Holy”, it’s like she’s returned to us. This creates something kind of meta and mirrored in both of her audiences, us in the theatre and those we see in the church. For her fellow believers in the pews of the film, this concert recording signified a return to the music of the church. But as Franklin’s father later points out in the film, Aretha never left.

But witnessing the film brings us closer to the performer’s personhood than we ever really were allowed to, revealing a vulnerability we don’t typically associate with the more definitive power of her voice. She closes her eyes throughout, perhaps invoking the spirit, but also bound by nerves. You get the sense of her trying to get the thing right, but to also do right by the material and the audience that it matters to most. As her performance continues, you can see the connection between her soul and the music and the purpose grow in her increasingly confident posture. It’s the difference between being in the space and filling it.

We put Franklin on a pedestal of unquestioned perfection (and rightfully so), but if you pay attention in Amazing Grace, she’s never felt so viscerally human. The best concert documentaries not only wrap us in the feeling of the moment and the music, but also illuminate something essential about the artist. This one does that through her connection to a community and a higher power, but also in the subtle ways she finds herself through song.

Of course, the film carries an easily accessible spiritual and religious connotation, one that only carries more meaning for us seeing the film after her death. But instead of feeling like a funeral, the joy of the film allows us to celebrate her life with all the vitality she brought to it.

Amazing Grace is streaming now on Hulu!

All Soundtracking installments can be found here!

Comments

[Sawyer]

It's an "amazing" cinematic experience. And maybe my favorite film of 2019. Great write up.