MISS SHARON JONES! (Barbara Kopple). 93 minutes. Opens Friday (August 19). See listing. Rating: NNNN
Barbara Kopple made a movie about Sharon Jones at the worst possible time – and got the best possible result.
Kopple embedded herself with the eponymous Dap-Tone soul sensation in early 2013, just as Jones and her band the Dap-Kings finished their album Give The People What They Want – and just as Jones was diagnosed with stage two pancreatic cancer.
Jones undergoes treatment and is forced to put her career on hold, which gives the doc a nervous, uncertain energy even if you know how things turn out, neither the filmmaker nor her subject does, putting us right there in the moment with striking immediacy. When Jones cracks, we flinch when she panics, we panic.
But it’s not all misery. Even bruised and exhausted, Jones has a tremendous spirit, and when she loses herself in a spontaneous church performance in her Georgia hometown, Kopple captures something close to transcendence.
