Kritiken

Amazing Grace is not just a documentary that has been unearthed from layers and layers of history and forgetfulness, it is a document of one of the most awe-inducing performances by a musician, perhaps in the world.

Reviews of the film have described it as so transporting and transcendent that I was unprepared for the modesty of the director Sydney Pollack’s cinéma-vérité style, much less for how tired Franklin appears. . . . Franklin, with her brilliant sense of dramatic timing and penchant for suspense, delays the resolution as long as possible.

Amazing Grace is a rare object: something truly mythical, something we’d only ever told stories about, that having finally arrived somehow lives up to its name. That’s saying something.

Like the footage from [Martin Luther] King’s funeral, this extraordinary movie gives us access to the woman behind the microphone while at the same time radiating a ghostly effect that’s impossible to shake.

Pollack’s doc has two major flaws: The spectacle isn’t specific enough (as when the Reverend C. L. Franklin makes his mack-daddy entrance), and the camera frequently searches to catch Mick Jagger in the crowd (as if white rock royalty is needed to confer significance).

Although the voice of Aretha Franklin, however incomparable, may be familiar to us, it’s rare to witness the sheer physical and mental exertion required to create that glorious sound. The camera tight on her face, Aretha closes her eyes as soon as she starts to sing “Wholy Holy,” as if plunging into a fathomless trance or shutting out all stimuli deemed superfluous to making a joyful noise.

Aretha Franklin’s rapturous power and intense concentration are revealed in long, urgent closeups that seem to reflect even the cinematographers’ awed astonishment. The film is a triumph of timeless artistry over transitory obstacles; its very existence is a secular miracle.

The film is itself an amazing artifact, something even more than a recording of a genius performer. The congregation, augmented by the back-row presence of Mick Jagger, deserves a collective Oscar. Various reasons have been given for why Amazing Grace was never released. One reason surely is that the movie is too real to be assimilated as entertainment.

It doesn’t matter how much time you’ve spent with “Amazing Grace” the album. No suitable preparation exists for the experience of witnessing its recording.

The film’s high point, much like the album’s, is Aretha’s rendition of “Amazing Grace,” which begins here with a pan down from a massive painting of an impressively ripped Jesus that dominates one wall of the church. A quick, awkward zoom in the middle of a shot and the resulting blur of Aretha’s face seem to mimic — inadvertently — the tears in our eyes.