“If you watch modern music documentaries, you have all these talking heads who explain it and lead you by the hand through the whole thing, but in this, the music envelopes you, there’s no chat.” These words by Joe Boyd, one of the producers on Aretha Franklin concert film, Amazing Grace, sums up, with incision and pure, matter-of-fact concision, what sets it apart in one fell swoop. Originally directed by the Oscar-winning Sydney Pollack, and later predominantly realised by producer Alan Elliott, it is an experience that is revelatory in all the right places. Capturing the Queen of Soul as…
