A respectful tribute to full life of Aretha
“Genius: Aretha,” an eightpart miniseries about legendary performer Aretha Franklin, gets many important things right: a powerhouse central performance, mesmerizing musical numbers and impressive recreations of the 1960s. But an overburdened story line and inconsistent character development prevent the National Geographic project from being the showstopper that it sets out to be.
From the getgo, Cynthia Erivo (an Oscar nominee for “Harriet”) commands the screen, providing her own amazing vocals and letting us know in no uncertain terms that this woman named Aretha is going places. Erivo’s rousing performance is not so much an imitation of the R&B star but an embodiment of Aretha’s soul, and we can’t take our eyes off her.
Telling the story of Aretha Franklin offers both an artistic gold mine and a storytelling challenge, because her journey was overstuffed with lifechanging events, including a difficult childhood, a meteoric rise as the Queen of
Soul, a courageous civil rights battle and a series of complicated relationships with men, particularly her controlling father.
Showrunner and Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright SuzanLori Parks
(“The United
States vs. Billie
Holiday”) attempts to balance all these elements, but sometimes it has the unintended effect of slowing things down. Too much time, for example, is spent on Aretha’s troubled marriage to Ted (Malcolm Barrett), her incompetent husbandmanager. Their conflicts come off as “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”lite, and there is nothing in Aretha’s character here that suggests why she would put up with such a bumbling fool.
Aretha’s civil rights activism, meanwhile, gets relatively short shrift, in the sense that we don’t see her evolving and struggling with these momentous issues. What made this careerconscious woman take such a risk? We see her appearing at a few news conferences and delivering a spectacular musical number in the South, but these scenes come off as perfunctory plot points more than character development.
It’s telling, for instance, that we don’t get to witness how Aretha reacts to the assassination of her friend the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“Genius: Aretha” spends a lot of time going back and forth from adult Aretha to the young Aretha (nicely played by Shaian Jordan), in flashbacks that are expertly crafted and acted. But in the latter episodes (seven of the eight were made available for review), the flashbacks become more expository than revelatory, weighing down the narrative momentum.
Whatever the drawbacks, Parks and director Anthony Hemingway leave us with plenty of captivating moments, too. The miniseries has terrific musical numbers in every episode. The scenes with Aretha in the recording studio are stellar and show the artist’s genius, which is not an easy feat to pull off cinematically.
Courtney Vance, one of our more underrated actors, shines as Aretha’s skirtchasing pastor father, Clarence, whose presence is so overwhelming that even the formidable Aretha shrinks when they are in the same room.
Erivo also has some fun tugofwar scenes with David Cross, who plays her visionary record producer, Jerry Wexler.
Even with eight episodes, the major events in
Aretha’s life seem truncated, because the biopic miniseries is trying to cover so many bases. There are times when we don’t know exactly what’s driving Aretha, whether it’s her commitment to civil rights, her competitive nature with her sister (even after she has achieved Queen of Soul status) or her hitandmiss love life.
Indeed, it’s as if the producers were bound and determined to give Aretha the “Respect” that she deserves, glossing over her drinking, weight problems, family turmoil and other issues that may have given us more insight into this remarkable woman. Respect is a good thing, of course, but a little of it can go a long way.