Amazing Grace (2018)
There are films that tell stories, and there are films that simply bear witness. Amazing Grace belongs firmly in the second category, and the story of how it came to exist at all is almost as remarkable as what ended up on screen. In January 1972, Aretha Franklin returned to her gospel roots, performing two live recording sessions at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in the Watts neighbourhood of Los Angeles. The resulting double album became the best-selling live gospel record in history, and a film crew led by none other than Sydney Pollack was present throughout to capture the whole thing on 16mm. Then, for reasons that became the subject of years of legal disputes and logistical headaches, the footage sat in storage. Synchronisation issues, ownership wrangles, and Franklin's own reported objections kept the material locked away for decades. By the time Amazing Grace finally reached audiences in 2018, forty-six years had passed since those two January nights in Watts. That kind of delayed release is, to put it plainly, almost unheard of in documentary filmmaking.
The person responsible for bringing the project to completion was producer and director Alan Elliott, who acquired the footage and spent years working through the technical and legal obstacles to get it into theatres. Elliott is not a household name in documentary circles, and this film is by some distance his most prominent credit, which gives the whole enterprise an unusual quality: a relatively low-profile director tasked with shepherding one of the most historically significant pieces of concert footage ever recorded. The studios involved, including Spike Lee's 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, helped lend the production some cultural credibility, and the restoration work carried out on the original footage is genuinely impressive. There is no reported budget figure that has been widely circulated, though it is fair to say this is clearly a labour of love rather than a commercial calculation. Fans of music documentaries in a similar vein might find points of comparison with Style Wars (1983), another film rooted in a specific cultural moment that carries a weight well beyond its runtime, or with Shakedown (2018), which similarly rescues archival footage from obscurity to document a world that no longer quite exists in the same form.
As for the performers on screen: Aretha Franklin needs little introduction here, but it is worth noting that the 1972 sessions came at a particular point in her career. She had already scored a string of major soul and R&B hits, but this recording represented a conscious homecoming, a return to the church music she had grown up with as the daughter of the celebrated Baptist preacher C.L. Franklin, who appears in the footage alongside her. The Reverend James Cleveland, a towering figure in gospel music, led the Southern California Community Choir throughout the sessions, providing the kind of musical foundation that only someone of his experience and authority could. The rhythm section is no less distinguished: drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie and bassist Chuck Rainey were two of the most in-demand session musicians of the era, their work appearing on records by artists across virtually every genre. The assembled talent on that stage in Watts, in other words, was not accidental. Amazing Grace has drawn comparisons to other performance-led music films, and if you have an interest in how musicians translate their craft into something that transcends a studio setting, it sits in a broader conversation alongside films like Rockers (1978) and Tender Mercies (1983), both of which place music and spiritual feeling at their emotional centre.
Amazing Grace (2018), directed by Alan Elliott, is less a traditional documentary and more a pristine, reverent document of a singular moment in music history: Aretha Franklin's legendary 1972 live gospel recording sessions at Los Angeles' New Temple Missionary Baptist Church. Restored from long-lost footage and finally released decades after its intended debut, the film offers an intimate, unfiltered view of the Queen of Soul at her most spiritually and vocally transcendent. If you are a fan of Franklin, gospel music, or live performance cinema, this is essential viewing, a masterclass in artistry, faith, and raw, unrepeatable talent.
And make no mistake: Aretha is astonishing. Every note, every run, every moment of call-and-response with the choir and congregation crackles with power, grace, and emotional depth. The camera work is unobtrusive yet expressive, capturing the sweat, the tears, the joy, and the communal energy of the room. You feel like you're there, not as a spectator, but as a participant. For those already attuned to this music, the film is a revelation, a reminder of why Franklin remains arguably the greatest female vocalist of all time.
But that's also the film's limitation. Amazing Grace offers little beyond the performance itself: minimal context, no interviews, no narrative arc, and almost no behind-the-scenes insight despite its "documentary" billing. It's a concert film, pure and simple, and if gospel or soul isn't your genre, there's very little here to hold your attention. The runtime, while not excessive, can feel static without a story to propel it forward.
Amazing Grace is a breathtaking musical experience for those already invested in Aretha Franklin's legacy or the gospel tradition. But as a standalone film, it's niche by design: beautiful, powerful, and historically invaluable, yet unlikely to convert the uninitiated. Watch it for the voice, stay for the spirit, but don't expect much more than that.
Amazing Grace is, by any honest measure, a film with a very specific audience in mind, and it does not particularly pretend otherwise. What Elliott has produced is polished but unapologetically narrow in its ambitions: a preserved record of an extraordinary event, presented with care and without embellishment. Whether that constitutes a success or a missed opportunity will depend almost entirely on what you are hoping to find when you sit down to watch it. The broader questions it raises about archival footage, delayed release, and what a documentary actually owes its audience are genuinely interesting ones, and they linger after the film ends. Some concerts deserve a film. Some films deserve a better concert. This one, it seems, might simply deserve to be heard.
Rating: — | Year: 2018 | Watched: 2026-05-24
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Amazing Grace (2018) on YouTube
Where to watch (UK)
Stream: Studiocanal Presents Amazon Channel
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