2003-03-13

Before you start reading this review, I want you to put on your copy of Marvin Gaye�s �I Heard It Through The Grapevine.� Now listen to the first few opening bars, before Marvin Gaye starts singing. Hear that tambourine?

Now tell me the name of the guy who�s playing it.

The name of the man playing that tambourine you�ve probably heard a million times is Jack Ashford, and he was one of the Funk Brothers, a group of studio musicians who played on literally hundreds of hits in Motown�s heyday. In a lovely sequence at the end of the film, the names of these hits cascade down the screen in a beautiful textual waterfall: �Stop in the Name of Love,� �Shotgun,� �You Really Got a Hold on Me,� �Ain�t No Mountain High Enough,� and �Ain�t Too Proud to Beg,� to name just a few.

Standing In The Shadows Of Motown, which is directed by Paul Justman and based on Alan Slutsky�s novel of the same name, is a long-overdue tribute to these musical wonderboys who worked anonymously for years under Berry Gordy, who ran Hitsville USA, the studio which produced so many of these classics. Think of any well-known Motown singer or group�Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Martha and the Vandellas, Diana Ross and the Supremes�and you can be pretty sure that the musicians who provided the instrumentals were the Funk Brothers.

The film juxtaposes archive photos and film clips with recent interviews of the men, along with fantastic footage of a reunion tribute concert to the Funk Brothers, where the Brothers play with contemporary singers in the place of the old Motown greats. There are also a few dramatic recreations of certain anecdotes the Brothers tell, which can often be a clunky device in a documentary, but works surprisingly well here.

It�s fascinating to watch the way these men have transformed from young, energetic musicians to elderly men with more perspective and thoughtful analysis of the past. Given the chance, though, we see they can still rock with the best of them, as the concert scenes with Joan Osborne, Bootsy Collins and Chaka Khan prove. It�s wonderful to see how the men interact with these younger musicians, and it�s obvious that the young ones have a deep admiration for the Brothers� vast musical experience and talent.

Although Standing in the Shadows is mostly about the music, it also touches on the social issues of the day, such as race relations and civil rights, drug and alcohol abuse, and the Vietnam War. These issues lend the movie depth and round out the portrait of the musicians much more fully, by situating them and their music in a particular historical era.

Unfortunately, although the majority of the Funk Brothers survived long enough to appear in the movie and receive their belated credit, there were some who did not make it. However, their gently spectral presence lingers over the entire film. Not only are there affectionate anecdotes told about them by the other Brothers, but at the end of the film, during the opening scenes of the concert, there is a large portrait of each late Brother next to his appropriate instrument, something I found extremely touching.

I could write more about the movie, but instead I�ll say this: do yourself a favour and see this film. You�ll laugh, you�ll cry, you�ll want to sing along, or even get up and dance. You will also never listen to another Motown hit again without thinking of the Funk Brothers. Now if you�ll excuse me, I�m going to go listen to Jack Ashford play that tambourine one more time.

Posted by polarcanuck at 11:28 a.m.

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