“Amazing Grace” is one of the purest, simplest and most powerful movies I have ever seen. Maybe that’s why I cried through more than half of it. I hope everyone who loves any kind of music can get to see this long-awaited documentary.

If you go to see it (the album performance is on Apple Music) don’t bring a tissue, bring a couple of towels. This is music that soars, and took me with it. From the opening song, I was up in the clouds, listening and shaking my head with the angels.

In 1972, Aretha Franklin, then a rising 29-year old pop and soul singer recorded “Amazing Grace,” a collection of 14 classic gospel songs – Precious Lord Take My Hand, Amazing Grace, What a Friend we have in Jesus, Wholy Holy, Climbing Higher Mountains- at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles.

The session – it included gospel pioneer James Cleveland, his choir and drew an enthusiastically wild audience that included the members of the Baptist congregation,  Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts and Franklin’s imposing and loving and always supportive father, the Baptist minister C.L. Franklin.

This album has a rich and bizarre back story, it took decades for it to be made and was nearly lost forever.

Warner Brothers hired Director Sydney Pollack to direct a documentary about the two performances that comprised the record, it  was apparent to everyone that it would be a monumental success, and it was – it is the best-selling gospel album of all time.

I have been loving it and listening to the album for years, and frustrated over why there was no movie.

It turns out Pollack brought an army of cameramen and sound recordists, but he forgot to bring “clappers,” the wooden tools film editors used to marry sound to image.

For nearly 50 years, the “Amazing Grace” documentary could not be shown, it existed only in film cans the frustrated yearnings of fans who could only dream about what the performance would  look and sound like now.

Thanks to Atlantic Records producer Alan Elliott and advances in digital technology, the movie could now be matched up and seen, and it was worth the wait. It is a glorious movie, so full of power and emotion and faith it almost lifted me right out of my seat.

I am too emotionally constipated to have taken the trip. When I see it again, I might just jump up and shout.

Franklin wanted to record this album in a church, a medium-sized Baptist Church in a rough neighborhood of Los Angeles.  She wanted the audience to participate, she wanted the performance to be intimate, and they did and it was.

Her interactions with the choir and the audience – almost all of whom moved, danced, shouted, jumped  up and down, prayed and cried and waved their arms as she sang, gave the film  an intimacy and kick that few modern films – or performers – could even imagine matching.

The documentary had a rawness and realism missing from modern films. The cameras went in and out of focus, the shots where herky-jerky, jumping up and down (no modern film its million dollar image stabilizing cameras would permit that).

Pollack was seen through the film darting and in out of the photos, frantically gesturing to the camera crews to move her or there, catch this or that shot. It was almost comical, even though it nearly turned out to be tragic. Cameras zoomed in and out of focus, it all added to the frenzied feeling of the film.

How could he have forgotten the clappers? Pollack was saved, just like the song says, he would otherwise have been known forever for having made it impossible for anyone who wasn’t there to see this performance, instantly the stuff of myth.

The movie, shot a half-century ago,  has a raw, almost amateur quality it, but this only added to its power, it brought me closer to it, it never detracted from Franklin’s miraculous performance. And that’s the right word in a gospel context, it had the feeling of a miracle, a great spiritual happening.

She really was the “Queen Of Soul.”

Franklin and the other performs were sweating profusely, and she never lost her poise or style or dignity She never talked to the adoring crowd other than to say hello and goodbye and thank you, but the intimacy between her and them was overpowering.

Franklin was always the star, her voice was hypnotic, at one point in the movie I closed my eyes and went off into space with her, riding her voice.

She always stood out at the center, a figure of great presence and dignity. She seemed to know she was going to be brilliant those two nights, that this was her destiny.

It was interesting to be watching this film in a theater in an affluent town in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. The theater filled with upper-middle class white people, there were only a handful of whites in the documentary.

I was surprised at how still the people in the theater were, they were the biological opposite of the people in “Amazing Grace,” flashy and defiant in their Afro’s and bright clothes. The choir and the audience even made Jagger look stolid and ordinary.

Nobody in my theater moved a muscle or showed any emotion during this exuberant and almost overpowering performance –  Franklin’s genius was evident in every song, and the contrast between her audience in the church and the audience in the theater said so much about our culture and African-American culture.

We are taught to hide our emotions. Franklin’s audience was uninhibited and full of joy and feeling. They were taught to show what they felt.

I cried a number of times, and tapped my foot discreetly. I was also too self-conscious to do what I wanted to do, jump up and clap my hands and dance with Maria and shout back at Aretha.

That would  have been embarrassing to me, and I probably would have been tossed out of the theater. It also seemed creepy to me to jump out and shout for someone else’s culture, and I probably would have looked silly. They call it cultural appropriation. It didn’t seem appropriate. Or maybe I just don’t have the guts.

But I have to give Franklin credit, she reached deep inside of me and shook my soul.

I envied the interactions and connection of the audience in the church.

When Franklin hit one of her amazing high notes, the chorus almost melted down in their seats, they were so touched, and they were one with her. Some rushed out onto the church floor to move and shout in front of her. One woman fainted in the front row.

Everyone was right in it with her.

I’ve never seen anything like it in a movie theater.

The congregants and choir members were as much a part of the remarkable performance as she was. This is a movie I will see a couple of times.

Franklin was content to just sing, to be herself.

She stood out in her regal gowns. Sometimes she closed her eyes, or sat at the piano, sometimes she turned to sing with the choir. Sometimes she whipped the congregation into a frenzy with her incredible range and power.

Sometimes, she smiled at her father, or at the famed Clara Ward, one of her mentors.

One of the movie’s many moving moments came when Franklin’s father, the Rev. Franklin, came up on stage to wipe the sweat from her brow while she sang. The moment was so tender and natural, it just went right to the heart.

Pollack’s cameras moved in close, everyone was sweating profusely.

I also enjoyed seeing  Ward in her two-foot wig and Mick Jagger, who seemed blown away  by what he was hearing. I am not Mick Jagger, but I was blown away also.

One reviewer said it was like hearing God sing, and that is what it felt like to me. It wasn’t just a movie, it was an amazing experience. It is only fitting that the documentary comes out in theaters just in time for Easter.

This is a cinematic resurrection, some reviewers have called it a miracle.

As you may have guessed, I can’t   recommend it  highly enough. On Easter Sunday, Franklin will sing you right into grace. I hope you have more courage than I do and will get up and dance and shout for joy.

I predict you will want do.