Amazing Grace
AMAZING GRACE © 2019 Studiocanal
Amazing Grace, directed by Sydney Pollack, follows the late soul queen Aretha Franklin on a two-night gospel live recording of her greatest selling album of the same name on January 13th and 14th in 1972 at New Bethel Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles. The footage shot by a skeleton crew with five 16mm cameras was long thought to be an unusable disaster due to Pollack's inexperience in directing music documentaries. Pollack failed to utilize a clapper board to synchronize the sound to the footage, leading to multiple hours of ruined un-synched film. Pollack, however, never gave up and until his last few days; eventually succumbing to his diagnosis of cancer in 2007. Handing over the reins to producer and friend Allain Helliot who salvaged over twenty hours of footage in conjunction with Aretha Franklin's estate, a year after her death on the same year of release.
Amazing Grace is as close to a spiritual experience that you'll find in the medium of film. It is a captivating and compelling embodiment of the richness of spiritualism and culture. Pollack's documentary is a celebration of all things life. The queen-like manifestation of what Aretha Franklin evokes is enchanting to behold on screen. The screen presence alone with her tantalising voice travels a great plain and reaches within your soul. It is a truly extraordinary thing to see such a stoic and quiet individual with extremely prolific and captivating talent deliver what is an utterly dazzling performance. Pollack doesn't quite explore Aretha as a person, but this isn't an exploration of the person but instead the experience of what Franklin delivers.
Pollack exercising a skeleton crew of sound engineers and camera operators with 16mm film, offers what is essentially a deeply homemade and prolifically personalised experience. Tranquillity and trepidation fill the void of this incredibly limited but personal space. It's a raw, energetic and organic portal into that deeply intimate setting in 1972. The intense grain provided by the 16mm camera promotes this sense of a personalised homemade feature. The intimacy of the small-scale setting of the New Bethel Baptist Church offers a delightful arrangement of intimacy and bubbling energy that slowly but surely skyrockets. The camera is always utilised in an up-close and personal manner to a degree of comfortability and engagement. Cutting back and forth to audience members gasping in emotional delight. This organic approach is a wonderfully evocative and immersive tide that rolls over you.
The film, keeping up proceedings, never shies away from continuity issues or technological flaws. It never breaks away or cuts from the more mundane, albeit, deeply organic notions of normalcy. The nonchalant conversations between Aretha, Reverend James Cleveland and Alexander Hamilton are shown, warts and all. Technical problems dampen the show in numerous moments, but as a whole, the film prevails. The feature is perfectly orchestrated in an exquisite edit by Jeff Buchanan that blends the ordinary with the extraordinary with delightful palpable energy. In particular, there is a scene between Aretha and her father, C.L. Franklin, after she brings the entire house down with an utterly stunning rendition of gospel. Reverend James Cleveland brings Franklin senior upon the stage for an impromptu speech. It's an elegant and subtle nuance that provides the feature with a significant embellishment of emotional resonation and weight but also a contextual look at the culture and society of the hostility of 1970's America, and the defiance of peaceful election against hatred.
The aesthetic on a whole provides a stunning portrait and insight into this deeply moving and extraordinary experience of faith and culture. You're invited to what is essentially a lost timestamp of a bygone era. Seeing this on-screen and seeing the joy and pleasure of a celebratory culture with such wonderful humanity is extraordinary. It's quite haunting that in her lifetime Franklin never got to see and hear the plaudits. Made more upsetting is the fact that fifty years beforehand it should have been showing on televisions nationwide for all to see in its majestic form. Yet, in an ironic fallout, the wait of fifty years has breathed new life into this two-night intimacy showcase of Franklin and provides what is a stunning portrait of majestic bliss.
