WHITNEY’S MOVIE GETS MORE RESPECT THAN ARETHA’S

Naomi Ackie as Whitney Houston in the re-creation of her Super Bowl anthem in 
"I Wanna Dance With Somebody."

By Dominique Paul Noth

The musical biography has been a reliable if often corny sub-genre for Hollywood.  The techniques don’t vary too much.  You string together the hits. You fabricate the artist’s life.  Or you can partially fabricate around known events. 

That’s worked for  Cary Grant as Cole Porter, Robert Walker as Jerome Kern, Larry Parks in occasional blackface as Al Jolson, Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn, Angela Bassett at Tina Turner, Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, even Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash.

You can even dig into their lives a bit to look for something more lasting -- as Respect maybe intended to do in 2021.  I reviewed it then but didn’t publish till now because it offers a contrast with the  better Whitney Houston bio film intended for the recent Oscars 2022 , I Wanna Dance With Somebody.  Both films wanted to be considered after the 2019 success at the ceremony of musical bio “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Yet both failed even to be nominated, though the Houston film is far better because it didn’t duck as many life realities.

In almost all musical bio films,  you invent scenes of the subject creating a riff or a tune on the fly as if they didn’t know the melody before entering the recording studio. This is always the amusing part, trying to force moments when your designated genius actually became a  genius.

These manufactured moments  certainly undo “Respect,” but in fairness the contrasting Whitney Houston film focuses more on the people who helped her gain fame. Her own participation in her choices for success may be exaggerated but they are limited to her listening to a song and preferring it.  With eminent music producer Clive Davis as executive producer (also played sympathetically in the movie by Stanley Tucci) you accept that it tied closer to the truth. 

There were abnormal hopes that true insights would emerge from “Respect,”  a look inside the private, landmark, troubled and musically inventive life of Aretha Franklin, the daughter of a Baptist pastor who was already great as a child singer, went on the gospel road with Martin Luther King Jr., then invaded New York for many albums, then went to Muscle Shoals in Alabama to coax some honky-tonk white musicians to follow her lead and then never looked back as the Queen of Soul.

“Respect” is a movie stuffed to the gills with great singers who do little acting.  Except for Jennifer Hudson both emoting and singing as Aretha, and Jennifer never met an Aretha wail she couldn’t master.  

But first there is Aretha at age 10, dragged out onto the church circuit by her pastor father and (look out, world) sung by a  true young talent, Skye Dakota Turner, playing Aretha at age 10.

A powerful number of Broadway divas play her mother, sisters and mentors (Audra McDonald, Heather Headley, Hailey Kilgore, Saycon Segbloh and Mary J. Bilge as Dinah Washington) usually singing as a bridge to other events or playing backup singers.  

Director Liesl Tommy and playwright/screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson may have had a more probing idea on their minds for “Respect.” Maybe pressures from the family and the studio interfered, since both groups had influence on the project.

Their film begins with Aretha as a child but strangely ignores how Aretha became pregnant at ages 12 and 14. It lets the big-voice child singer Skye show her appeal as Aretha at age 10 and then, when a male friend invites himself into the child’s room, we fade to black, and then all we know when the lights come on is that Aretha has become a surly withdrawn girl who has to be coaxed into singing.

Jennifer Hudson
 and  Marlon Waylan 

Flash forward. We meet Hudson as Aretha at age 19, casually introducing her children from a few years earlier but now flirting with men, confident of singing, occasionally breaking out in what the family terms “demons” of behavior.

It struck me that the creators were setting up a specific pattern of child sex abuse that would linger into grownup life, perhaps exploring whether it was related to Aretha’s secrecy, militant attitudes and brand of feminism. That would have been a much needed probing script. But we are only allowed to review the movie in front of us.

The film subsides into more familiar patterns – bad choices in men.  Her domineering pastor father (solid work by Forest Whitaker) wants to manage her career and control her life. Her abusive husband (Marlon Wayans) then wants to manage her career and control her life.  Hudson is not asked to do much as an actress, except suggest a strong will and musical intelligence inside her that the men in her life refuse to recognize. 

Hits  dominate any personal story. Comedian Marc Maron gets to employ his dry wit as producer Jerry Wexler, but the film winds up flipping from “and then I wrote” to “and then I noodled on the piano like a genius” to “and then I talked the label into letting me do gospel.”  It’s a parade of musical challenges, the real internal dilemmas of Aretha left behind, with Hudson doing the singing.

If the film had only stuck with exploring some of the deeper domestic hints, maybe it would have snuck in to the Oscars. It was a missed opportunity. The best thing about it if you stream – about the only way left to find it since it was out of theaters in minutes --  is the conclusion under credits, borrowing footage of  the real Aretha at her memorable Kennedy Center performance in 2015 shortly before her death, shedding her expensive furs singing “Natural Woman” for composer Carole King.

Turning to “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” it is blunter about Whitney’s private life, even concentrating on an aspect that many of her fans didn’t see – her lesbian roots in choice of companion.   (Apparently lesbianism is more palatable to movie audiences than a 12-year-old getting pregnant.) It turns out that the lesbian friend lingers on and emerges better for her than such men as Bobby Brown, who took her to the drugs and is taken to the cleaners in the film. 

I suspect this touch of honesty comes from screenwriter Anthony McCarten, who also penned “Bohemian Rhapsody” (2018), but it is a relationship augmented by director Kasi Lemmons (who moviegoers may best remember from her acting days, as FBI training cohort of Jodie Foster in “Silence of the Lambs”).  She does well with modern film techniques, borrowing the computer graphics interface (cgi) techniques smoothly for the concert scenes,  using file after file strips much as “Bohemian Rhapsody” did to create the  mammoth Super Bowl crowd when Whitney sang the National Anthem.

Tucci as Clive establishes early that he may have set some great talents in motion over the decades but generally stays out of their personal lives.  The film suggests he broke his own tradition a bit in Houston’s later years when her drug use was clearly limiting her soprano ability to provide those anthem slides from soft to belting on songs.

The Houston film isn’t a parade of great singers in the background, but it surprises us with the singing talent of Tamara Tunie, best known from “Law and Order SVU,” here playing Cissy Houston (Whitney’s influential singing  mother).

“I Wanna Dance” is overall better acted. British actress Naomi Ackie is a strong emoter as Whitney, doing her own gospel singing but leaving the main tracks to Whitney, whom she lip-syncs perfectly.  She does look a lot like her thanks to prosthetics and talent.

Tucci is sympathetic as Davis, Tunie is likeable as Cissy, Ashton Sanders is growingly hateful as Bobby Brown and veteran actor Clarke Peters perfectly conveys the one thing all these black female celebrities seem to have in common – a domineering father figure.

The Whitney film doesn’t completely solve the “then I wrote” problem with such bios, even though turning it more into “and then I sang.” It doesn’t investigate Whitney’s personal limitations deeply enough, just showing her falling into drugs to sustain her  intense performing schedule. It prefers to leave us with the better image of her, but it doesn’t hide domestic entanglements as “Respect” did.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor.

He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives still at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain.

A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. 

 

“TAR” VS ‘EVERYTHING’ IS OSCAR DEBATE

 

Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss in "Tar"

By Dominique Paul Noth

The Oscars (March 12)  are actually putting up front a ferocious debate about what the public wants in a motion picture.

Part of the debate is about selectability – audiences choosing a streaming service in the comfort of their own homes rather than going out to a theater to watch movies with total strangers, bigger screens and better sound. Streaming is winning based on the box office results, providing overwhelming financial proof  despite excuses such as the hangover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the more important debate is between “Tar” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” both movies I enjoyed on both emotional and intellectual levels, yet each addressing different aspects within the larger movie envelope. They are test opposites in the schools of moviemaking.

“Everything” a few days ahead of the Oscars, was climbing in the guessing poll as the likely Oscar winner for best picture and best actress against the long assumed best actress, Cate Blanchett, for “Tar.” Her director, Todd Fields, sees hopes  diminishing for what would be my choice as  best director as well as runaway the best film of the year. But  “Tar” clearly lit all my fires while the professional technical skills that rule  Oscar have reason to applaud “Everything.”

Given the makeup of the Oscar voting industry, there are good reasons why they will vote “Everything” as best picture and openly value the technical skill sets of the industry members.  It is a delight, attuned to what has changed in movieland and requiring new definitions of what screen acting is in the current environment.

It is a science fiction tale that explodes across the multiple universes in a way the Internet can only envy, but probably the Internet has helped lead  both younger audiences and older ones to think about life in this manner. So have years of comic book fantasies, now translated into runaway box office success, given some 30 Marvel features plus resurgence of the D.C brand and such triple threats as “Hunger Games.”

What keeps “Everything”  afloat is how the Daniels (as co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert are called) have inexpensively but cunningly by Hollywood terms roamed free and fast across artificial intelligence, rapid mind-bending editing, multiple universes (to which we apply the term multiverse these days), dimensions in which characters change personality and costumes whipping into different environments and ages while ultimately returning home for some basic lessons about family and domestic worth.

Ke Huy Quan and Michelle Yeoh in 
"Everything Everywhere All at Once"

While retiring from acting for  decades after being the cute kid in an Indiana Jones adventure, Ke Huy Quan is likely to win the Oscars best supporting actor honor, but even he would admit that his vocal tone is not the reason.  It is how he used movement, animalistic instincts and the Alexander Technique on posture and placement to physically change as the multiverse changes, from the wimpy husband to the martial arts expert with backpack and on and on as the needs and script require.

 The directors are expert at pulling him back and pushing him forward, as they do with much of the cast. Jamie Lee Curtis as the creepy IRS agent lurching toward the camera like the Terminator  (and I suspect that was the vision the Daniels were after with her threatening herky-jerky advances) may also win best supporting actress though there is strong competition.

There is one universe motif composed of  rocks talking to each other,  another where fingers turn into floppy hot dogs (reviewers tend to describe these sequences as  a  fight among dildos). There are dynamic kung fu passages. The movie is almost a travelog of movie memories and modern international film techniques and tech training (some viewers will need a Google search engine to keep track of what’s going on).

It  reminds us that so much movie acting these days requires body shaping, green screen and physical payoffs, far more than believing in the moment to moment acting sequence we have learned from the stage. This is not Bette Davis movie territory.

Michelle Yeoh is a wonderful center for these shenanigans (touted to win best actress Oscar since it would be a way for Hollywood to apologize for neglecting or isolating Asian characters).  Here she can use her dignity, manner and martial arts training with what seems like abandon. 

Acting  in such a free-wheeling environment, with the Daniels willing to try anything and yet have the savvy to return the story to a simple middle – well, it’s quite different than what Blanchett achieves in “Tar,” though there is a different kind of shape shifting by the actress who moves from CEO power to personable interview to loving husband to arrogant enforcer.

Some critics have wrongly criticized “Tar” as being high-brow (set in the Leonard Bernstein heights of classical music) or, worse, putting the liberal MeToo movement in its place.  Which it does, brilliantly, if you isolated from the whole film  how her Julliard masterclass elevates Tar’s putdown of a black modernist’s distaste for old white guys only to see social media excerpt her comments to make her look like an ugly arrogant racist. 

Wall Street Journal actually ran an opinion piece that accurately describes the scene but draws the wrong conclusion. It in effect damns the film with false praise, which “Tar” is suffering a lot from.

“Tar” is an example of how a fine director, Fields, can seem to be playing fair while selecting only those aspects of a character vital to his story.

For instance, Lydia Tar makes a big deal about having been mugged to explain facial bruises.  But in a fascinating sequence, the camera sees Tar invade the space of a female cellist she is sexually pursuing, get disoriented and, maybe, face-splat herself in a panic to escape.  We don’t see the face-splat but we hear her version at length – and we  have learned enough about Lydia to suspect that her power dominance and mental agitation are beginning to undo her.

I don’t want to give away too much of the movie – but let's emphasize that the invisible third person narrator we assume in "Everything" takes us where we  want to go in -- though it is really where the Daniels want us to go. Yet we accept the Daniels as truthful in a sci-fi world.

But Fields in “Tar” is actually directing our eyes to what he wants us to see about Lydia Tar and her world. “Anyone who watches this film is the final film-maker,”  Fields has said in an interview, but that is a facile comment for the press though it contains truth. It is another way of pretending he is not shaping our vision of Lydia Tar, who is a total fabrication that fits recognizably into our modern world.

He dares to trust our powers of observation in a fable about  CEO power, mob “virality,” self-deception and  a both admirable and manipulative protagonist who is undone in the end, without losing her artistic center.

Blanchett is not the only excellence in the acting realm. As one example, in a quiet observational way, Nina Hoss is fascinating as  Tar’s wife and mother of their adoptive daughter, also the Berlin Philharmonic's concertmaster – another example of how Tar is lovingly protective and an absolute tyrant in  scaring a school-chum who has been bullying her child.

Sophie Kauer, an excellent cellist plucked out of obscurity (and attractive in looks), plays the new object of Tar’s affection – but totally indifferent to the seductive suggestions of her would-be captivator.  In fact, it is Tar’s obvious plunge for the cellist’s affections that gives root to the explosion and disgrace that pursue her.  

Blanchett keep us watching from moment to moment – one reason why the film seems slower, because it is psychologically deeper and rewards careful attention. “Tar” represents the sort of excellence within one world, while suggesting many worlds to careful observers, that to my mind requires the top awards. But I don’t expect it to win.

A previous review contrasted “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “Argentina, 1985.”

About the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic.
He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs.
From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with still active archives at milwaukeelabor.org. In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his Doms Domain dual culture and politics outlets. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.