This article is part of Portrait Mode , a Slate pop-up series about biopics.

The most thrilling moments in movies about artists are the ones where you feel as if you’re present at the moment of creation, not just being told how something happened but watching it happen in real time. The Aretha Franklin biopic Respect , from 2021, is a standard-issue piece of awards bait, but it comes alive when Franklin, played by Jennifer Hudson, enters the studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, casting off years of micromanagement by record labels who tried to package her as a demure chanteuse, and seizing control of her own artistic voice. As Hudson belts out “ I Never Loved a Man (the Way That I Love You) ,” the house band following her lead and urging her on, you can practically feel her artisti

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