Amazing Grace review: Aretha Franklin in her absolute prime in Sydney Pollack’s concert film

Previously abandoned film footage of the soul singer, performing gospel standards in 1972, is synched nearly 50 years later

Dir: Sydney Pollack, Alan Elliott. Starring: Aretha Franklin, James Cleveland, C L Franklin,Alexander Hamilton, Bernard Purdie, Chuck Rainey, Cornell Dupree. U cert, 89 mins

Amazing Grace is as uplifting a film as you will see all year. It’s a concert movie filmed over two nights and featuring Aretha Franklin, the “first lady of soul”, performing gospel standards in a church in Los Angeles in 1972, with a huge backing choir and an enthusiastic congregation.

The music she recorded became a best-selling double album but the film footage shot by Sydney Pollack was abandoned because he hadn’t used a clapperboard and it couldn’t be synched. Nearly 50 years later, technology has solved the problem and we can hear Franklin in her absolute prime. She feeds off her audience. The more excited they become, the more her voice soars.

Pollack and his crew are a visible presence in the church. They are shooting with 16mm cameras and using a lot of electric cables. In their efforts to be unobtrusive, they squat down. There are an unusual number of shots of Aretha filmed from below. Pollack himself is often seen in the thick of it, signalling to his crew members and trying to coordinate the production.

The framing isn’t always elegant but we feel as if we are in the middle of the church. Among the spectators on the second night is Mick Jagger. He is first spotted at the back but by the time the camera returns to him, he has mysteriously migrated close to the front. Also in the audience, looking very glamorous, is veteran gospel artist Clara Ward, along with Mahalia Jackson, one of the key formative influences on the young Aretha.

Aretha doesn’t talk much. She interrupts one song to ask the choir and musical director to start again but there is no badinage between songs. She is there to sing. The Reverend James Cleveland, the “king of gospel”, hosts the shows. His role is somewhere between compere, performer and priest. He too has a glorious voice. Late in the film, Aretha’s father, Baptist Minister CL Franklin, makes a heartfelt speech about his daughter. However, we learn relatively little about her other than her genius as a kid for absorbing different musical styles.

The film stands as a celebration of Aretha. The filmmakers don’t delve into her back story in the style of recent documentaries about Whitney Houston or Amy Winehouse. They don’t talk about civil rights or try to place their subject in historical context. The documentary isn’t especially smoothly edited. Apart from one or two uses of split screen, it isn’t formally adventurous either. Pollack died more than a decade ago while Aretha died last year. The filmmakers, who’ve salvaged the material from the archives, take a utilitarian approach to their material. All that matters, they’ve clearly decided, is the music.

It may be heretical to say it but Aretha risks overegging the title song. As sung by her, the very word “amazing” is stretched near to breaking point and accumulates many tremulous extra A’s and I’s. You half wish she would hurry it up a bit and sing it a little more plainly. Then again, when she hits the high notes, the choir members are so overcome with emotion and admiration at the sheer beauty and strength of her voice that they burst into spontaneous applause. Watching Amazing Grace, spectators are likely to want to do the same. You can’t help but worship her brilliance.