‘The Makings of Curtis Mayfield’ Review: H.E.R. Directs an Irresistible Celebration of the ’70s Funk-Soul Genius

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Early on in “The Makings of Curtis Mayfield,” H.E.R., the 27-year-old R&B pop star who directed the film and appears in it as its interviewer and tour guide, offers a telling observation about her subject. “Curtis Mayfield,” she declares, “is one of the greatest of all time.

And people don’t even know.” I agree with H.E.R. on both counts. We’ll get to the greatest-of-all-time thing in a moment — though if you don’t know much about Curtis Mayfield and want to cut to the chase of why he was one of the greatest, I’d recommend that you simply go to YouTube and call up the nine-minute-long album version of “Move On Up,” which might be his most extraordinary song (though there’s a lot of competition).

It’s built around one of those grooves that’s truly epic and truly transporting: the syncopated horns, the dancing bass, the rapidly strumming guitar you only half register (though it’s there in the mix like stock in a gumbo), the high violins for that touch of romance, and, more than any of that, Mayfield singing about a new world in which Black people could feel a freedom and mobility so large it was daunting — a message of liberation that the song somehow gorgeously embodies in three minor chords, as if it were perched, in its very harmonics, between the tragedy of the past and the promise of the future.

It is, quite simply, one of the greatest songs ever recorded. If that’s the case, though, why is it that people…don’t even know?