Pros: Great music and an interesting story for music fans.
Cons: Kind of uninspired in its style.
The Bottom Line: STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN is highly recommended for any music lover, particularly if you love Motown. Some classic music here.
hkoreeda's Full Review: Standing in the Shadows of Motown
I’ve never really considered myself a Motown fan. Sure, I know Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, The Four Tops, and the rest, but looking back through my CD collection I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I don’t own a single Motown album. Still, I like the music, I can hum along when I hear a Motown song, and whenever I’m flipping through stations on the radio, if I hear a Motown classic, chances are I’ll stop at that station. It’s just damn good music.
STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN tells the story of the Funk Brothers, a group of Detroit musicians producer Berry Gordy hired to back the artists on his Motown label in the 1960s. Early in the film, the filmmakers go into a record store and ask shoppers about Motown, and they talk about Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, The Temptations, etc., but when they’re asked if they know who played the instruments, they sort of glaze over. “It was the Pips, right? Like Gladys Knight, and the Pips?”, responds one interviewee.
The Funk Brothers, in one form or another, played on virtually every Motown track ever produced between its founding and its move to Los Angeles in the early 70s. They were assembled from all over Detroit, mainly from jazz clubs, and at a time when R&B was still labeled “race music”, some of the Funk Brothers were white. However, race mattered little in the studio, because musically the group came together beautifully. In one scene in the film, the surviving members demonstrate how they would work, with one drummer laying down a beat, then another drummer playing off him, followed by the bassist establishing a strong harmony, the guitars going to work, the keyboards, and so on. This formed the foundation for some of the great songs of the 1960s, such as “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg”, “My Girl”, and “What’s Goin’ On?” Sure, the singers were talented, and the lyrics weren’t too shabby either, but you won’t get a guy like me to “watermelon” along with the radio unless the music is good, and the Funk Brothers’ music was very good.
Director Paul Justman works mainly in a “talking heads” documentary style, talking to surviving members of the Funk Brothers, other figures in the Detroit music scene, and a few music historians. If the film seems a bit inspired in the description, the style in practice is effective, combining the interviews with stock footage from the sixties and underscoring it with the songs. Somewhat less effective is Justman’s re-enactment of stories told by the musicians; I think I would have enjoyed the stories more had I been able to see the storyteller’s face, and the others’ reaction to the story, and been permitted to visualize the story for myself.
Justman does a nice job of establishing the members of the group just enough for each to make an impression, without ever giving the impression of dwelling too much on one member. Still, some of the Funk Brothers make more of an impression than others. The surviving Brothers recall the late hell-raising bassist James Jamerson, who played bass with one finger and once laid down a track while lying on his back on the floor, too drunk to sit upright, and they can’t help but smile when they remember. Another member, drummer Benny Benjamin, was the first in the group to pass away, back in the sixties, and one member remembers the day the group found out about it at the studio and he says, simply and directly, “we didn’t play that day,” in a way that says a great deal more.
The film also cuts occasionally to a concert held recently, in which the Funk Brothers performed many of their own songs, with guest vocalists including Gerald Levert, Ben Harper, and Joan Osborne. While some of the guest artists don’t quite work (Bootsy Collins upstages the music with his garish costumes, and Me’Shell NdegéOcello is too mellow for this group), others do very well with it, particularly Chaka Khan, who does a nice interpretation of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On?” and duets with a somewhat awestruck Montell Jordan on Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”. But no matter- the real focus of the concert scenes are the Funk Brothers, finally getting full credit for their great musical skill. As an interviewee says early in the film, “Deputy Dawg could be singing, and the song would still be a hit.”
Back when I was younger, still attending church with my family, the cover of the church bulletin read “The People Are the Church”. A similar statement could be made about the Motown sound. After Gordy moved the label out to California, he tried to get a new group together, but they couldn’t re-create the sound. STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN is probably the closest we’ll ever get to hearing that sound again, as the Funk Brothers get older (one died while making the film) and there doesn’t seem to be much interest in that kind of sound anymore. But now, because of this film, people know the Funk Brothers, and more generally, they know to pay attention to who’s playing the music instead of just who’s singing.
Detroit, Michigan, 1959. Berry Gordy gathers the best musicians in the city's thriving jazz and blues scene for his new record company: Motown. For th...More at HotMovieSale.com
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