Respect’ the New Aretha Movie Reveals Hard Truths

As one of the greatest artists and vocal powerhouses of our time, a biopic about Aretha Franklin has long been overdue. Respect, a new movie about the early life of the performer, was released last August 12 starring the equally talented, Grammy Award winner, and Academy Award Winner for her role as Effie White in the 2006 film Dreamgirls, Jennifer Hudson. The biopic was directed by Liesl Tommy and written for the screen by Tracey Scott Wilson. Hudson was personally handpicked by Franklin herself before her death in 2018, while this is the first feature film for both Tommy and Wilson who have both worked in theatre and television for several years. This movie is getting as much buzz as the Rita Moreno documentary at sundance.

The movie portrays a young Aretha Franklin who is still in the early stages of her musical career and doesn’t possess yet the iconic and legendary artistic identity that we know and love and business smarts that will catapult her career and cement her reign as the Queen of Soul. At the start of the movie, we are introduced to influential people in the singer’s life, her heavy-handed father C.L. Franklin played by Forest Whitaker (Academy Award winner for Best Actor in the 2006 film Last King of Scotland), who is a Baptist minister and civil rights activist and controls Aretha’s music career, and her absent mother Barbara Franklin passionately played by Audra McDonald who herself is a six-time Tony Award winner and two-time Grammy award winner. Barbara is a gospel singer herself who, soon dies moments after her introduction in the movie. Her brief appearance, however, already profoundly shaped the young Aretha.

The movie carefully treaded a sensitive subject in Aretha’s early life: her being a nonconsensual sexual encounter which resulted in her getting pregnant and giving birth at a very young of 13. Respect does not directly reference this incident in the singer’s life in depth. However, it was heavily and visually implied that Aretha was a victim of statutory rape, which director Tommy and writer Wilson tackled delicately. This event in Franklin’s life, and the subsequent death of her mother caused a troubled Aretha to be born, and the movie effectively portrays this interwoven with other forces that shaped the legendary Aretha, such as her religion, activism, and of course, her amazing music.

The movie further follows the development of her career. Aretha arryies with Ted White who is played by the comedian and star of critically acclaimed 2006 film Requiem for a Dream, Marlon Wayans. White, later on, becomes her abusive manager. Franklin then undergoes an artistic identity crisis being unsure of what kind of performer she really wanted to be, but she eventually overcomes this as she works with the legendary producer Jerry Wexler from Atlantic Records (terrifically played by the stand-up comedian Marc Maron) who made Aretha record with the first-rate band Ala in Muscle Shoals.

The film features many of Aretha Franklin’s iconic and hit songs, including “I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love you),” which she sings when she starts working with her collaborators at Atlantic Records. As she mustered the courage to leave Ted White, she belts the emotional and powerful “(You Make Me Feel like a) Natural Woman.” The film climaxes as the vocal powerhouse and star of the film Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin sings the titular song Respect while the film portrays Aretha’s best achievement in her bumpy career: the release of her album in 1972, Amazing Grace, which marks the artist’s return to her gospel roots, and her recommitment to God.
See our interview with John Giorgio one of the stars of Respect
[jwp-video n=”1″]