Opinion HBO's Tina is Tina Turner's way of telling us thank you — and

HBO's "Tina" opens with a thunderous greeting from Tina Turner: a clip from 30 years ago of the then-50-year-old singer in all of her silver-sequined, long-legged glory, demanding that a stadium full of people ask her how she feels. She then, of course, blows them, and us, away with her song "Ask Me How I Feel. "You might think you know. After all, over the years, she's given us her autobiography "I, Tina"; the biopic "What's Love Got To Do With It, " starring Angela Bassett; and more recently, the Broadway musical "Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, ” all dedicated to explaining to us the nuances, hardships, trauma and abuse the now-81-year-old singer has endured throughout her life."Tina, " though, offers something a bit different. It technically begins with Turner's musical arrival — into a new genre and a new style in the 1980s — but it also starts with a truth about her that is both obvious and long ignored. In 1981, five years after she filed for divorce from Ike Turner, she revealed the atrocities she experienced at his hand during an interview with People magazine in the hopes of quieting the constant questions about her former husband and their divorce. In telling her whole story in full once — including the abuse she witnessed as a child, the financial abuse she suffered and much more — the mega-star clearly thought she might never have to talk about it again. But the opposite happened: Since revealing the most painful parts of her life to the world, Turner has been pushed to continue retelling the story, which has meant reliving and rehashing the most horrific moments in her life. Once she opened up to us, the world never stopped taking from her."Tina, " then, is meant to be the one last time she'll let us in. Told in five parts —"Ike & Tina, " "Family, " "Comeback, " "The Story" and "Love" — we hear about her life from Turner directly, filmed sitting in her Swiss estate in 2019. Filmmakers Dan Lindsay and T. J. Martin documented the singer's early years, her thoughts on motherhood and her will to make it. They use archival footage and Turner's memories to pull their audience into the past and right on stage with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, showing us that, even then, Turner's public persona was dazzling. But, of course, behind closed doors, she suffered in silence during her 16-year marriage from the physical, mental and sexual abuse inflicted upon her by her former husband."Tina" forces us to relive those highs and lows, too; it is as glorious as it is heart-wrenching. Spanning six decades, we hear from Turner both in the footage recorded in 2019 and footage recorded previously. The detailed accounts of the terror, exhaustion, violence and dominance Turner experienced reminds us that the singer's life was never meant to be survivable. It is also a reminder that Black women are very rarely afforded soft spaces to expand and thrive.


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Article Link: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/hbo-s-tina-turner-documentary-her-way-saying-thank-you-ncna1262194


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