Search - Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story on DVD

A Valiant attempt, but falls short of subject.

kingofthejungle | Memphis, TN | 11/02/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The music made at 926 E. McLemore in Memphis, Tennessee has always been one of my passions. Funkier than Motown and every bit as innovative and important as Sun, Stax records turned out some of the best music ever recorded. So I was very excited to learn that Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville were directing a documentary about the history of Stax ,but after watching it, I feel that `Respect Yourself' falls far short of the glory of it's subject.

`Respect Yourself' has many flaws both as a film, and as a telling of the Stax story. First of all, the history of Stax can hardly be done justice in two hours. This is made all the worse by the directors apparent lack of understanding about using context to further a story. Martin Scorsese used context masterfully in his Bob Dylan bio, No Direction Home. He richly illustrated how Dylan's work fit into the society and time period it was a part of, and because of it he created a powerful film that can be enjoyed even by those who aren't Dylan fans. In `Respect Yourself' not a word is said about the history of Memphis music leading up to the creation of Stax, and the contemporaneous events in the music scene and civil rights struggles are given only very fleeting mentions (with the exception of the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.). The ineptitude with context causes the director to constantly go back to interview snippets of people saying `this was the only place in the south where black people and white people could work together' which becomes repetitive to the point of being patronizing. (Ok, I get it, let's talk about the music, or at least WHY that was significant and HOW it was influential).

This repetitiveness is made all the more infuriating when one sees the superficial coverage of the art and careers of giants like Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, and Rufus Thomas. Thomas was marginalized to only a scant retelling of the making of `Because I Love You' which seems over before it begins, Redding and Sam and Dave fare slightly better, but not by much.

At times the interviews seem somewhat fragmented and handled in a clumsy manner, as if the directors wrote the script first, and then plugged in clips that fit their story, rather than gathering the interviews first and weaving a narrative out of them. Performance clips also seem to be chosen in a somewhat haphazard fashion, with sometimes awkward and inferior performances chosen over other far superior ones available.

All of these faults conspire to throw of the pacing of the first half of the film covering the studio's most important years (1960-1967). There are a few highlights in the first half, such as the inspired juxtapositioning of the performances of `My Girl' by the Temptations and Otis Redding. It is an absolutely perfect way to bring into focus the contrasts between the polished Motown and the Soulful Stax.

In the second half, after the death of Otis Redding, things pick up a bit and it is obvious that this is the story the directors really wanted to tell. The Al Bell years are covered very competently, and the coverage of Stax's involvement in African-American struggles gives the viewer at least some idea of why Stax was important.

The performance footage shown here of Booker T & The Mg's playing `Time Is Tight' circa 1970 is absolutely incredible, and I would LOVE to see this full performance. These guys are without peer when it comes to a band functioning as a unit to make a unified groove. Gordon and Neville do a good job of showing the success and relevance of the company in it's last years, and portray Al Bell as the complex figure that he is in relationship with the company's history.

I also would like to say that this film LOOKS great, and whoever handled the graphic design did an EXCELLENT job, and that can't be overstated.

Despite all of it's faults, `Respect Yourself' is an entertaining two-hours, and packed with great music. It is however, far from the definitive statement on Stax. I hope one day Stax will get the treatment it deserves, until then however, this will have to do."