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.