Soul Power English Movie
Director: Jeffrey Levy-Hinte.
Producers: Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, David Sonenberg, Leon Gast.
Directors of photography: Paul Goldsmith, Kevin Keating, Albert Maysles, Roderick Young.
Editor: David Smith.
Production company: Antidote Films (New York)
Sales: Celluloid Dreams, Paris.
Release Date Jul 10th 2009
Certificate tbc
Genre Documentary, Music
Watch and download Movie Here
review
In 1974, the most celebrated American R&B acts of the time came together with the most renowned musical groups in Africa for a 12-hour, three-night long concert held in Kinshasa, Zaire.Essentially a belated follow-up to Leon Gast's 1996 Oscar-winning documentary "When We Were Kings" -- Gast is credited as producer here -- the focus now shifts from the fight itself to the spectacular concert staged nearby in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) three weeks before. Featuring terrific performances from the likes of James Brown and Miriam Makeba, the result is a colorful, fast-moving crowd-pleaser that should score nicely in theaters and later on DVD -- without matching the knockout success of "Kings."
While there's an awful lot to like about this infectious celebration of a remarkable event featuring some superb, larger-than-life performers at the top of their game, the enterprise comes across as a bit of a missed opportunity. Assembled from more than a dozen hours of footage shot for what was intended as an official, authorized documentary about the "Rumble" and the accompanying musical extravaganza ("Zaire '74"), what director Jeffrey Levy-Hinte -- one of four editors on "When We Were Kings" -- ends up with is a conventional, chronological survey restricted by his decision to use no material other than what was originally shot.
The original intention was to edit and release a film as soon as possible after the concert and fight, but tortuous legal wrangles meant that the material lay untouched for decades. Despite this passage of time, "Soul Power" still feels very much like an authorized, approved version of what was -- given the logistics and individuals involved -- surely a wilder, more chaotic and more interesting affair than what's captured on screen. A real-life "Nashville" this most certainly ain't, though there are a couple of brief moments which intriguingly point in that kind of direction.
In addition, now that the full despotism of Zairean president Mobutu Sese Seko (under whose auspices both fight and concert were organized, partly to boost his global profile) is known, the ebullience and optimism of the performers and organizers takes on a bitterly ironic air. It's to the filmmakers' discredit that no mention is made of this thorny political context -- what "analysis" there is actually comes from a charismatic-as-ever Ali -- especially as many audiences may not know much about Mobutu and his misdeeds. And it might have helped if they'd included a word or two about that three-decade delay between the concert and the appearance of the film.
The majority of viewers will, of course, simply revel in "Soul Power" as an excuse to see Brown, Makeba, B.B. King (and Lucille!), et al, on the big screen, with the benefit of great sound, via fresh-feeling footage that could almost have been shot yesterday. True soul, however, is all about going much deeper than the movie ever really attempts: There are times when just coming from the heart isn't quite enough.
The brainchild of Hugh Masakela and Stewart Levine, the music festival dubbed “Zaire ’74” combined with the famous “Rumble In the Jungle” to become not just an enormous media event, but also a celebration of Latin, African and African-American pop in all its various guises.
Yet for obvious reasons, musical footage took a backstage seat to fight coverage and the charisma of Muhammad Ali in When We Were Kings, the brilliant film that won the 1997 Oscar for Best Feature Documentary. Over a decade later, however, Kings editor Jeffrey Levy-Hinte decided there was enough concert footage in the vaults to make a feature-length film. That footage, most of it tightly edited and well-shot by several different cameramen, is what constitutes Soul Power.
Given the talent on display—performers like James Brown and Celia Cruz at the very height of their creative powers—this should make for a barn-burner of a film, a classic in the soul concert vein (a la Wattstax, etc.). And there is no doubt that some of the performances are utterly mesmerizing: Cruz and Fania-All Stars bandleader Johnny Pacheco dancing wildly to a Latin beat, B.B. King’s scorching guitar work on “The Thrill Is Gone,” and the inimitable James Brown and his awesome house band, The J.B.s, tearing it up on the title track.
The problem, however, is that even though Soul Power also contains footage that shows how the concert came together, the preparation of the stadium venue in Kinshasa, Zaire, and the experiences of some of the artists as they mingle with the local populace (there are also some entertaining riffs on race and other matters by Ali himself), it seems unfinished.
The failure here is a lack of context: Even though a number of the major artists, like Cruz and Brown, are no longer with us, it seems the filmmakers missed out on the chance to talk to Bill Withers, B.B. King and other living participants about their experiences at this legendary event. This seems even more puzzling given some of the best moments in When We Were Kings involved then-present-day interviews with people like Norman Mailer and George Plimpton, whose reminiscences of the Ali-Foreman fight added immeasurably to the film’s impact.What emerges from Soul Power, then, is a slapdash feel, as if the makers felt all they had to do was edit all this great footage, and that was enough. But it isn’t. Soul Power could have been a wonderful companion piece to When We Were Kings. Instead, it plays as an entertaining, but vastly inferior, knockoff.
No comments:
Post a Comment