Amaz­ing Grace – first look review

It has, up until now, been the stuff of leg­end: In 1972, direc­tor Syd­ney Pol­lack was hired by Warn­er Bros. to film the record­ing of Aretha Franklin’s sem­i­nal gospel album ​‘Amaz­ing Grace’. Because he failed to use clap­per­boards, the sound synch­ing proved to be beyond the resources of the project, and it was shelved indefinitely.

Before his death in 2008, Pol­lack hand­ed the footage to for­mer Atlantic Records exec Alan Elliott, who embarked on a recon­struc­tion. In 2015, the result­ing film was due to screen at the Tel­luride Film Fes­ti­val, but Aretha sued to block the release – osten­si­bly for rea­sons due to con­trol over her image, though rumour mills claimed it was a dis­pute over royalties.

And now, fol­low­ing the Queen of Soul’s pass­ing in 2018, the film of Amaz­ing Grace is here – a vibrant chron­i­cle of the two nights when Franklin, along with the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Gospel Choir, put down one of her best-loved albums in front of a small but pas­sion­ate audi­ence. The film shows Franklin at the height of her pop fame, return­ing to her roots as a gospel singer – a homecoming.

Obvi­ous­ly, it’s a ter­rif­ic con­cert. Thanks to the orig­i­nal album, and the sub­se­quent release of ​‘Amaz­ing Grace: The Com­plete Record­ings’, fans are famil­iar with Aretha’s rous­ing per­for­mances of stan­dards like ​‘Mary Don’t You Weep’, ​‘You’ve Got a Friend’ and ​‘Old Landmark’.

The film brings a dif­fer­ent dimen­sion to them: We see the choir file in, and feel the antic­i­pa­tion in the room, before Franklin’s voice pierces through the atmos­phere. We see the game face in Franklin’s expres­sion in a hud­dle between takes, in a dis­cus­sion about whether the pre­vi­ous run through veered more towards the key of E or F. We see how much is rid­ing on this per­for­mance for the artist: how she’s nego­ti­at­ing the sacred return to the church and the pro­fane respon­si­bil­i­ties of stardom.

Indeed, we see, we see, we see – and the pic­tures con­tain moments that were not there for the hear­ing. The album has the mov­ing moment when Aretha’s father, Rev CL Franklin, gave his bless­ing to the occa­sion: “[She’s] my daugh­ter, and I wouldn’t be right upstairs if I didn’t appre­ci­ate that. But she’s also a stone singer!” The film includes the moment where he wipes the sweat from her brow. And there is plen­ty of per­spi­ra­tion, such is the total­i­ty and gen­eros­i­ty of her performance.

The crowd, too, at times becomes ani­mat­ed. ​“Don’t be bash­ful when the cam­eras are com­ing your way, cause you don’t know if it’s com­ing back – get up in it, alright!” advis­es Rev James Cleve­land, who serves as a mas­ter of cer­e­monies. Rather than the tra­di­tion­al fan­dom hys­te­ria of a con­cert, this plays more like a ser­vice, with wor­ship­pers occa­sion­al­ly tak­en by the spir­it. It’s a grad­ual pro­gres­sion, from a young woman in a mul­ti-coloured sweater pout­ing with glee and affir­ma­tion at ​‘We Have a Friend in Jesus’, to the whole audi­ence get­ting up by the time of ​‘Climb­ing High­er Mountains’.

Mick Jag­ger is spot­ted at one point, but most of the audi­ence is made up of ordi­nary black civil­ians. Even see­ing this with a seat­ed, most­ly white audi­ence at Berli­nale, there came a point where the heat in the room and the sound from the speak­ers rose to the point where the dis­tance seemed to melt away. Amaz­ing Grace pass­es one of the key tests of a great live music film – it makes the spec­ta­tor feel they know what it’s like to be in the room.

As with last year’s release of the lost Orson Welles mas­ter­piece, The Oth­er Side of the Wind, the avail­abil­i­ty of Amaz­ing Grace restores a miss­ing piece of cin­e­ma his­to­ry. With the ges­tures it reveals, and the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty it cap­tures, it gives us some­thing else – an act of wor­ship, reborn.