Doc Corner: 'Tina' on HBO
Friday, April 2, 2021 at 8:00AM By Glenn Dunks
Tina Turner does not like to talk about herself and her life with abusive ex-husband and artistic collaborator Ike Turner. She notes this in Tina, a new HBO documentary about her life. But she is aware that public interest in it, which is why she has to keep on telling us all about it. This is show business after all, and if she doesn’t, somebody else will. First it was People magazine. Then it was Kurt Loder’s I, Tina. That was followed by a film adaptation, What’s Love Got to Do With It?
One would have hoped that that film would have been the end of it for Turner, her story of abuse and late career triumph captured on film to great acclaim and with an Oscar-worthy performance by Angela Bassett. Nearly 30 years later, however, Tina is back as the subject of T.J. Martin and Daniel Lindsay’s documentary. Whatever the directors’ reasons for doing so, I am unsure. But for Turner herself at least, she has decided to take this opportunity to bid farewell to her fans and to (hopefully) put her story to bed.
It is admittedly a curious directorial choice to have their own subject say they’re sick of talking about the story at hand and then make a film about it anyway. Thankfully, her life is so interesting and full of so many big highs as well as tragic lows that it’s all but impossible to make a boring movie out of it. In that sense, Tina is entertaining. The filmmaking is generally quite strong, and the editing team of Martin, Taryn Gould and Carter Gunn is technically well-crafted. It hits all the big moments of Turner’s career, utilising new interview footage of Turner (filmed at her home in Switzerland) as well as previously unheard audio recordings from her sessions with Loder. Divided into five chapters, Tina is a documentary that is wise to carve out a narrative of perseverance rather than strictly one of survival. Tina is more than just a survivor.
The problem with Tina, however, is not Turner or her story. No, the problem with Tina is that it follows the expected blueprint far too closely, lacking any filmmaking edge and most importantly the swagger that its subject is so known for. Thematically, it doesn’t get to the guts of Turner as a performer, which is how most of us know her. Why she performs and how. Nor does it navigate Tina as an emblem of how society allowed bad men to persist through life, which is certainly a more relevant subject for 2021. Tina is, after all, just one of many female musicians with whom the entertainment industry has been more interested in the ratings and record sales they can get from the welts on their face than their artistic, emotional, or creative lives. See also the very bad dual Whitney Houston documentaries of 2017/18).
Instead, these Oscar-winning filmmakers (they made 2011’s Undefeated as well as LA 92 in 2017) choose to tell her story through the personal and professional moments that have more or less already defined her and have been well covered in other projects. I’ve reviewed several other musical bio-docs just like it and they’re always tricky to write about for these same reasons. Tina is by no stretches a bad movie. But is it a great one? No. It never really stood a chance.
Strangely, despite her career carrying on well past that of What’s Love Got to Do With It?, the documentary ends more or less around the same time as Turner was on top of the world as one of the biggest stars selling out stadiums like the Rolling Stones. It does jump to the opening night of a Broadway production of her life where a rare appearance from Tina produces rapturous applause and adulation. As it should!
She doesn’t look her age, but her body shows signs of frailty following a stroke and kidney transplant that is in sharp contrast to those famous images of her on stage. All big hair, long legs, fringe dresses and hips that taught Mick Jagger a thing or two. You have to expect that given she is 81 years old, but it does lend the final passages a poignancy that isn’t there otherwise. Yet again, Tina is her own best asset. I hope that now after the magazines and the TV appearances and the biopic and the musical and the documentary that Tina is at peace with her story and that she can leave it behind to history. For her sake, I hope we can let her memory as a rock and roll superstar rest more easily now, too.
Release: Streaming on HBO.
Oscar chances: I wouldn't expect it, no. Bio-docs do still appear on the nomination lists (What Happened Miss Simone, RBG, I Am Not Your Negro), but I think you need an X factor that Tina doesn't have. Coupled with its early release, I suspect it won't progress further.
Reader Comments (16)
I'm sad to hear that it stops in about the mid 80's,she did so many great songs and concerts after that esp in the 90's when she was having huge hits into her 50's even doing a Bond theme.
Turner stopped having big hits by the end of the 80's in America (with the exception of "I Don't Wanna Fight No More" from the movie), so that explains that I guess. Maybe that's indicative of how the doc fails to expand its horizons.
No hits in US is surprising given that I distincly remember "Golden Eye", "On Silent Wings" (ft. Sting), "Missing You", 'When The Heartache Is Over" (produced by Cher's "Believe" team the same year!) and "Open Arms" receiving respectable airplay.
She was having top 20 hits here in the UK throughout the 90s Disco Inferno,Why Must We Wait Until Tonight,Goldeneye,Steamy Windows,Missing You,When the Heartache is Over,It Takes Two,Way of the World,I Don't Wanna Fight and On Silent Wings.
I thought it was great but I would've liked more about Tina's artistry.
Her catalog has Cher's hodgepodge quality to it—a ton of cover songs, in Tina's case. Both of them get discussed as phenomenal gig workers jumping from one opportunity to another without much rhyme or reason, through lean times and boom times. And so the "career survivor" story supersedes any curiosity about them as artists.
I'd love to know how Tina approaches singing and her point of view on music in general. It's not evident through her catalog like a Janet or a Madonna.
I had the privilege of seeing Ms. Turner in 2000 here in Chicago, and of course queen slayed. There was a giant hydraulic arm that projected out from the stage and then formed a runway over the audience--no guard rails, no cushions. She danced along this high wire on stilettos, rousing the crowd into gales of affirmation.
I have been listening to her 1986 album Break Every Rule, which is very underrated and is chock-full of musical delights. The title song--sublime. Tina, much respect.
It's not our fault if America stopped listening to good tunes.
Eternally in my playlist. Her story has a lot of drama and great music, but the ending is happy, unlike what happened with other singers. Fortunately.
Marcel,
America stopped doing good tunes.
@Gwen-Agreed. It's just that whatever isn't in the top 40 or trending on YouTube or the Twitter, that's where the good music is. I did see it and yes, it doesn't really provide anything I already knew about but it was still fun as I love to crank "River Deep Mountain High" to a loud volume as that is a song I think has to be played at MAXIMUM VOLUME.
Columbia Record House introduced me to Tina as a blossoming little homosexual in 1993. I have loved her since that moment.
Knowing what Ike was putting her through at the time certainly gives me pause, but as a kid she and Little Richard operated on a plane of excitement that no one else could touch. I even thought she should have gotten an Oscar nomination for her Acid Queen number in Tommy. It's so electric that its five minutes make maximum impact.
While it's not as egregious as the Whitney documentaries (which framed her career as over when she continued to have #1 records and touring), as others have said, Tina had a career moving forward. Like most from that period (Olivia Newton John is a prime example) it was the of the adult contemporary variety, which I guess isn't very exciting.
Yes her artistic voice is what I want to see, her legs upstaged her now her back story. Why not focus on her growth as a artist, development as a whole performer, singer and stylist. She choreographs and arranges her whole shows. Didn’t she put together The Best and Golden Eye!, like its the same story over and over. How many interviews where the interviewer wants to know how she stays in shape, what the hell didn’t she just sing and dance a few hours over what others do at a hour long exercise class! She has such range vocally and distinctive voice. Nobody does covers like her, their better or as good as the hit from whomever man or woman had a hit first. Focus on the artist and the times.
Why would this be an Oscar contender? It aired on HBO and was never in a theater. I'm expecting an Emmy push, just like "Tiger," "Belushi," "Allen vs. Farrow," and on and on.
Kyle, Belushi (the only of those titles you mentioned that is a stand-along film) was eligible for Oscar. Docs that screen on HBO or the like usually qualify for both.