The sheer energy and innate charisma of Tina Turner remains a thing to behold, and this new documentary – which had its world premiere at Berlin, and also screens at the Dublin and Glasgow Film Festivals – serves as an end note to a life and career that has encompassed spectacular highs and troubling lows.
The film is about ‘closure’, as is clearly stated in the closing scenes. There are no new revelations or lost footage, but instead a controlled determination to tell it as it is and was, and draw a final line under an astounding musical life.
Co-directed by Dan Linday and T.J. Martin, Tina opens with a new interview with Tina in her Swiss home shot in 2019. The opening question immediately takes her back to 1981 and her interview with People magazine when she first talked about the abuse she received from her husband and musical partner Ike Turner.
Since that 1981 interview, journalists over the years have chosen to question her about Ike and their time together as if one couldn’t exist without the other, ignoring her true reason for the interview, to try and draw a line under that abusive part of her life and finally start her journey unshackled from the role she played in an iconic duo. Because from then on she would be purely ‘Tina’, a performer of rare, magnetic, talent and blessed with a real determination to become the queen of rock.
The film is relatively straightforward in structure – using chapter headings such as ‘Ike & Tina’, ‘Family’, ‘Love’ etc – and featuring a limited number of interviews. It tells the remarkable story of a woman born Anna Mae Bullock in 1939 in Tennessee, whose mild-mannered ways changed when she saw Ike Turner and his band play in St Louis in 1957. “I was this little frail thing,” she recalls, but when she had a chance to show off her voice she was quickly taken on board, a schoolgirl by day and stage performer by night.
But while the 2019 Tina interview footage punctuates the film, the key aspects of the abuse by Ike comes via audiotapes recorded by People music journalist Carl Arrington for his article, and from writer Kurt Loder, who co-wrote her autobiography I, Tina (cue plenty of shots of audio-cassettes turning). The film details the need for Ike to maintain control – although Tina admits she promised him she’d never leave him – and, after their nuptials, his desire for success, philandering and drug use. His brutally controlling nature saw him become more and more violent towards her. He would beat her, have sex with her and then make her perform on stage. While deeply and continually upset, she stayed silent and loyal for years.
Things finally came to the surface in 1976 when she and Ike flew to Dallas and were in a car heading to the Hilton Hotel. She recalls him hitting her, at which point she finally snapped and decided to fight back. “I was gone…I was flying,” she recalls. When he went to sleep in their hotel room she walked out, headed across the freeway to the nearby Ramada Inn. The next day she flew back to Los Angeles and went into hiding. Their divorce saw Ike keep all of the rights to their music, but all she demanded was that she got to keep her name.
After the separation she took as much work as possible to pay bills, but when she started working with manager Roger Davies she told him of her dream to pack rock stadiums. He eventually encouraged her to sit down with People for “that” interview, and while she found herself being taken more seriously as a performer, it wasn’t until she headed to London in 1983 and recorded What’s Love Got To Do With It that her career truly took off.
She hated the song…it wasn’t rock’n’roll enough for her… but after working on it with the writer Terry Britten it all fall into place in 1984, making it to No 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The subsequent album Private Dancer went on to sell more than 20 million copies, and she embarked on a series of tours, all selling out. Her role in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome saw her profile rise even more.
The chapter “The Story” sees the film take an about-turn as it dwells on the 1986 autobiography I, Tina and 1993 biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It, which starred Angela Bassett as Tina. Footage from the Venice Film Festival sees her saying she didn’t want to see the film as it just reminded her of memories she wants to forget.
The final section titled “Love” hints at the happy ending to come as it dwells on her marriage to Erwin Bach – whom she met in 1986 and married in 2013 after a 27 year-relationship, with the couple living happily in a beautiful home on the shores of Lake Zurich. The film opts to not focus on her health issues or much of recent years as it heads to the end, though it does see Tina and Edwin travelling to New York for the premiere of the stage musical Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, but as Erwin Bach says: ”This documentary – and the play – is about closure.”
USA, 2021, 118mins
Dirs: Dan Linday, T.J. Martin
Production: Lightbox, MFC, Universal, Altitude Entertainment
Producers: Simon Chinn, Jonathan Chinn, Diane Becker
Cinematography: Megan Stacey, Dimitri Karakatsanis
Editors: Carter Gunn, T.J. Martin, Taryn Gould
Music: Danny Bensi, Saunder Jurriaans
