Respect, the newly released 2021 movie, is a competent and professional cooperation between Jennifer Hudson who portrays Aretha Franklin, director Liesl Tommy, and writer Tracey Scott Wilson. The movie is a biographical musical drama portraying the life of singer Aretha Franklin.
Photo by: Quantrell D. Colbert
Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin showed how she had to overcome big obstacles from her journey of being a timid preacher’s child to a singer recognized globally. After learning forgiveness and embracing her unique gifts, she rises to unprecedented heights and inspires many. Between an unfortunate death, physical molestation, two unexplained teen pregnancies, strained relationships with siblings, an unrelenting father, an aggressive partner, patronizing producers, social mobilization, and falling from grace, we get an intricate life story never seen before.
Hudson, of course, is at the center of it all. It’s a delight to witness her as Aretha Franklin grow from a timid minister’s daughter to a Queen of soul, and it’s no wonder that the film’s most important scenes are musical. The film employs a different technique for each song, deliberately juxtaposing Aretha Franklin’s calmer times producing music in Muscle Shoals, for example, with the spiritual vibrancy of a church service or the overpowering intensity of an event at Madison Square Garden.
A startling, dimly illuminated depiction of Aretha Franklin as a young woman made me gasp. It’s a basic, terrible image of suffering that persists even as the tale progresses and the biographical parameters are met. As a biography, the movie does what is required of it. As much as one may dispute some of the film’s decisions and lament its smooth story-telling, it captures Aretha Franklin as a popular historical person with her great success story. It primarily provides you with insight into her songs full of emotion, power, poetry, and sentimentality. These are songs that fill you up with emotions and recollections even after falling off popularity. You find yourself singing along in your brain, and you keep singing them even after the credits have rolled.
Hudson has an engaging range just like an actor, and it’s a joy to observe her enter a room. She doesn’t have Franklin’s appearance or voice, but she handles every part with confidence and a beautiful singing voice. Even when she’s making you tremble in your seat, she never feels dominated by Aretha. Hudson, moreover, does what unforgettable singers do: she transports you, dragging you along with her as she ascends and ascends. However, the film struggles to deal with the silence of Franklin’s life, and even when Hudson takes over, the character remains frustratingly ambiguous. She’s hazy rather than fascinating, perhaps because she’s been drifting rather than directing her destiny for far too long.
While watching the inherent rise to fame, all of which is set against a backdrop of the life of Aretha Franklin, the film helps viewers live out the lives of the incredible cast. You find yourself yearning for her recording sessions, musical snippets, and hits that made her the queen of soul. Liesl Tommy re-creates Franklin’s life moments with vivid detail right from her performing “Chain of Fools” as flowers pile up her feet to singing “Precious Lord” in Martin Luther King’s funeral, a landmark performance she transmits with hauntingly, note-perfect accuracy.
