After Einstein e Picasso, the third season of Genius (released in March in the USA on NatGeo, in Italy it will arrive on Disney + in June) chooses to tell the genius of Aretha Franklin, beating the biopic cinematic Respect, scheduled for August after a troubled almost ten-year production and followed by Franklin herself until her death in 2018.
Regina del Soul
The difficult task of playing the queen of soul is convincingly fulfilled by Cynthia Erivo, who over the course of the eight episodes shows off her remarkable singing skills. Screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks has structured the series in a back and forth between past and present, which coagulates around two main timelines – a rather common solution for a miniseries: on the one hand, the take-off of Franklin’s career, from the transition to Atlantic in 1967 until the 1998 Grammy Awards; on the other hand, childhood in the 1950s, his very early debut in the church where his father preached, the loss of his mother and two pregnancies at 12 and 16 years.
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The relationship with his father is one of the most explored elements: played by Courtney B. Vance, CL Franklin is essentially a co-star, appears in all episodes and is often mentioned when he is offstage. The thing is understandable: we are talking about a very important figure, a Baptist pastor and activist for the rights of blacks as famous and charismatic as discussed for his libertine conduct, who also managed the first part of his daughter’s career. However, this constant presence ends up obscuring the same Aretha that the series wants to celebrate, just as she stages her double struggle for self-affirmation as a black in the United States and as a woman in a macho culture.
The music
Among the many defects, the series has the great merit of never forgetting the music, which is by no means obvious: on the one hand the complete musical talent of Mrs. Franklin emerges, as a pianist and as a producer; on the other hand, we always return to the fundamental theme, that is, to his ability, through his voice, to “transform the burden of life into beauty”.
Genius: Aretha Suzan-Lori Parks, Disney + in June