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Funk Brothers Robert White and Joe Messina
rehearse at Motown Records' Studio A in the music
documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown.
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A few years back, at a packed theater in Detroit, the first reunion concert of the Funk Brothers, a large group of studio musicians who worked together at Motown Records in the '60s, helped audiences remember an era's worth of music known as the Motown Sound. Director Paul Justman was there filming the event for his music documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown, and the concert footage is the highlight of his rousing film.
Justman captures the spirit and the sounds behind the Funk Brothers through humorous anecdotes, interviews, concert performances and archival footage. Justman wisely keeps the history lesson concise, allowing the music to take priority. The film explains how the would-be Funk Brothers left their homes in the South and came to Detroit to work in the auto plants. They also began performing at Detroit nightspots like Baker's Keyboard Lounge. Later, in what would turn out to be a life-changing gig, Berry Gordy hired them as studio musicians for his newly founded label Motown Records.
Motown launched the singing careers of Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye, but the Funk Brothers, the musicians responsible for the finger-snapping music, remained in the shadows.
Standing in the Shadows of Motown is based on Allan Slutsky's same-titled book about Motown bass player James Jameson. Justman wisely uses Jameson's story as a launching pad to revisit all the Funk Brothers and his film is richer for it.
Advocacy is the theme that drives Justman's passionate film. You're quickly convinced that Funk Brothers made up the greatest hits machine in the history of Pop music. More importantly, you also agree with Justman's hypothesis that the Motown sound was ultimately about the musicians.
The surviving Funk Brothers, most notably Joe Hunter, Richard "Pistol" Allan, Joe Messina and Bob Babbitt talk, listen and jam throughout the film. The love between them and the respect they had for the celebrity singers who performed with them are evident. There are many stories about Motown, but Justman's film stands out as one of the better tales. Like the best biographies, Standing in the Shadows of Motown is both inspirational and sad. Justman's film is essentially a tale of resentment, anger and abuse put to timeless, beautiful music.
As is often the case with documentaries, Standing in the Shadows of Motown is a collection of pieces, and the director's goal is to make audiences forget what's missing from the film. The missing link in Justman's film is new insights into Motown founder Gordy. Various Funk Brothers recount how Gordy hired spies to make sure they weren't performing at other recording studios, although they were all underpaid. A more biting story is the one where the Funk Brothers remember how they first learned about Motown leaving Detroit for new offices in Los Angeles. They showed up for work and found a notice pinned to the studio door.
Basically, Berry is nowhere in sight because Standing in the Shadows of Motown shows the nitty-gritty life he dealt to his Motown musicians. I would have enjoyed hearing more dirt on Berry. Still, I understand that Justman wanted his film to celebrate the Funk Brothers instead of attacking their villainous employer.
Unlike landmark music films like Monterey Pop, Gimme Shelter and Stop Making Sense, there is nothing new or experimental about Standing in the Shadows of Motown and that's OK. Justman has a killer story in the Funk Brothers that makes up for his straightforward directing style of alternating archival footage and talking heads interviews. Standing in the Shadows of Motown is orderly instead of alive. Too often it feels scripted, rehearsed and practiced.
There is no sense of happening with Standing in the Shadows of Motown except for the concert footage. Here, in the film's best moments, celebrity singers like Joan Osborne, Bootsy Collins and Ben Harper take their turns performing classic songs like "Cool Jerk," "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted" and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg." Their renditions strip away the doo-wah-diddy-diddy layers and return the tunes to their soulful origins. It's also during this concert when the Funk Brothers finally appear to be at peace with the cards Motown Records dealt them. Finally, they break free of the shadows. The Funk Brothers deserve the spotlight, and Standing in the Shadows of Motown give them their due.
One question surrounds director Steven Soderbergh's glossy remake of Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film, Solaris. Why would Soderbergh attempt to remake a film masterpiece from the most revered and influential Soviet filmmaker?
The soulful reasons behind his Solaris remake belong to Soderbergh and his muse, but the beautiful results are available to everyone. Soderbergh's remake is shorter, more straightforward and slightly more conventional than Tarkovsky's dreamlike masterpiece. What connects the two films are humanistic characters, a passionate sense of spirituality and a clever use of a science-fiction story line for something far richer than the common outer-space adventure tale.
Like Tarkovsky, Soderbergh also tells his story in a deliberate manner. The film's protagonist is psychiatrist Chris Kelvin (George Clooney), who is sent to the remote space station, Prometheus, which orbits above the mysterious planet, Solaris, to investigate why its crew has cut off communication with Earth. Prior to his arrival, Kelvin received a plea of help from Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur), the station's commander and his close friend. Gibarian's ominous message doesn't prepare Kelvin for what he discovers upon arriving on Prometheus. The station's surviving crewmembers, Snow (Jeremy Davies) and Gordon (Viola Davis), are paranoid and extremely frightened.
Kelvin discovers first-hand the source of the scientists' stress the moment he falls to sleep. He wakes up to a lifelike ghost of his late wife, Rheya (Natascha McElhone). Prometheus is haunted, and Kelvin needs to find the source. His dilemma is that Rheya is so real. He doesn't want to lose his wife a second time.
There is a hallucinogenic mindset to the original Solaris, and that's not true for Soderbergh's remake. Tarkovsky used outer space as a context for dreams and mysticism. Soderbergh, however, remains trapped by the narrative demands of a movie romance and a futuristic mystery. Still, to Soderbergh's credit, it's a solid romance and an enthralling mystery.
Soderbergh's Solaris doesn't replace Tarkovsky's film, but it's a worthy companion. It also stands on its own strengths, strong performances, stunning photography and Cliff Martinez's beautiful score, and that's not something I expected going into the movie.
All of Tarkovsky's films, including The Steamroller and the Violin, Ivan's Childhood and The Mirror, continue to exhilarate and the same can be said for Soderbergh's passionate remake of Solaris.
Solaris looks plenty elegant, and Soderbergh gives the film more than its share of stunning images. There are flashes of sunlight that illuminate McElhone's wide-open smile and bursts of color from Solaris itself. The image of Prometheus floating above Solaris' swirling rainbow of lights is simply awe-inspiring.
Solaris boasts a kaleidoscope of beautiful images, but Soderbergh keeps returning to Clooney's anguished face. Soderbergh knows he has a likable presence in Clooney, someone who engages us in the film's complex story. But Solaris is not conventional entertainment despite Clooney's easygoing manner and approachable performance.
Clooney stands heroically at the center of Solaris. He guides us through dream sequences and flashbacks to both happy and unhappy memories of his wife. Clooney reminds me of the great line Gloria Swanson uttered about silent film stars in Sunset Boulevard: "We didn't need dialogue! We had faces!"
The same thing holds true for Clooney, who makes more of an emotional impact in Solaris when he's not speaking. With Clooney, his rugged face and lovelorn eyes say it all for us. McElhone, Davies and Davis provide solid supporting characters, but it's Clooney who represents the humanism in the film.
Audiences who watch Soderbergh's Solaris won't be familiar with Tarkovsky's story, but it's worth repeating. Tarkovsky was one the new generation of Soviet filmmakers who came of age during the Krushchev thaw, and he fought against the Soviet authorities throughout his filmmaking career. He was censored and vilified. Late in life, he fled Russia, making his final film, The Sacrifice, in Sweden before dying of cancer in 1986.
Although there's no comparison with Tarkovsky's life, Soderbergh has experienced career highs and lows since making a splashy debut with sex, lies and videotape. The difference is that Soderbergh's story is a happy one. Independent projects like Schizopolis and Gray's Anatomy have led to hit films like Traffic, Erin Brockovich and Ocean's Eleven. Some of Soderbergh's recent films are more substantial than others, but they are all worth watching.
Solaris is Soderbergh's most audacious surprise yet, a daring remake of a beloved film that, at first glance, looks too complicated for the Hollywood system. Then again, Soderbergh has become an expert at knocking down the commercial constraints against Hollywood filmmakers. If an American filmmaker has to remake Solaris, it might as well be Soderbergh, because nobody else is up to the task.
Standing in the Shadows of Motown grade: B.
Solaris grade: A.
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