Maya Angelou’s Resilient Spirit Lives on in a Sprawling Documentary

The documentary is narrated by Angelou’s enthralling voice, which feels like home: stern, sheltering, and soothing all at once. Co-directors Rita Coburn Whack and Bob Hercules attempt to capture the essence and journey of this renaissance woman as she moves through the frames with fluency and deliberateness. Unfortunately, the filmmakers’ ambitions fall flat as it spans everything from the traumas of Angelou’s childhood in Stamps to her memorial held at Riverside Church in Harlem. (Born on April 4, Angelou would have turned 89 this week.) As it races through the highlights of each decade, the movie at times skims past the nuances, the in-between moments, that make her journey extraordinary. Formally, the film offers a collage-like blend: interviews by those Angelou touched; rare photos chronicling her transformation from young girl Marguerite Johnson to Miss Calypso; images of her in the leading role as the white queen in Jean Genet’s play The Blacks, alongside Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones.

The fullest beats occur when Angelou is captured in action, exemplifying the intangible power of her spirit, which is something that the interviewees fail to communicate. She was a mother, a memoirist, a lover, a sex worker, a pimp, a poet, a dancer, a gatherer of people, and an ambassador of hope. Angelou contributed to the development of this project before her death in 2014, but the film proves that it is difficult to recount the story of a memoirist onscreen when she has already told her story with precision and eloquence.

Meanwhile, the interviewees attempt to illustrate Angelou’s spirit to the viewer — how she was able to look into their eyes and see directly into their souls. We see Dave Chappelle sitting across a table from her, his eyes to the ground as he weeps, as she offers him words of assurance: that living in one’s truth is the triumph. (The scene presumably takes place after Chappelle decided to leave his multimillion-dollar contract with Comedy Central.)

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