Rocketman (Film Review)
May. 14th, 2020 07:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAka the Elton John bio pic, which is up on Amazon Prime. As biopics about a musician go, this one was both entertaining and, in a smart choice given the subject, decided to go for full scale musical, i.e. Elton John's songs don't show up in the order they were recorded but a repurposed to be sung not just by him but also the rest of the ensemble at times to fit with the situation at hand. Also, since the whole story is told by our hero during therapy, you can, if you want, call unreliable or at least very subjective narrator.
The cinematography has flair, as when child!Reggie bursts into his black and white memories. Since I don't know much about Elton John's real life, I can't comment on the veracity of anyone's presentation. Though of course it didn't escape my notice Elton John is a co-producer, which makes the fact that manager/lover John Reid is, along with the parents, the villain of this movie, a heartless bastard first seducing and then exploiting and emotionally abusing our hero, come with a flavor of "the ex, according to the ex". But again: for all I know, Reid was/is (no idea whether he's still alive) exactly like that. (He's also played by Richard Madden, and since this movie isn't coy about its hero's homosexuality, it means we get a sex scene.) If Reid falls into the evil manager type of rock mythology villainy, the parents are a more unusual (in fiction, not real life) variation of abusive, because it's not the physical variety - they're instead narcissstic and cold (Mum) and mostly absent and cold (Dad, with the added insult to injury he's later shown to be able to have a warm relationship with his sons from his next marriage), and the movie is able to get across that this is absolutely terrible and deeply scarring in a way that's often missing in fictional abuse presentations, when the writers seem to think it needs to be physical to hurt.
On the other end of the emotional scale, there's songwriting partner Bernie Taupin the lyricist who would be Mr. Right to Reid's Mr. Wrong except that he's straight and very gently lets our hero down when young Reggie/Elton goes for a kiss early on by telling him he loves him like a brother. Bernie is played by Jamie Bell (whom I still can't see without marvelling how the kid has grown each time, courtesy of having encountered him first as Billy Elliot - look, it took me eons to get over this child encounter thing with Christian Bale, too!), and their songwriting sequences are lovely, though too few - I mean, I can understand why the movie went for the drama, but I'd love to have had more songwriting with Bernie and less abuse with John Reid. Elton John himself is payed by two great red haired kids at different ages and then by Taron Egerton who manages the transition from Reggie Dwighth to developing the Elton John persona beautifully, can sing and keeps the vulnerability alive even when Elton is taking out his misery on people not responsible for it in the later stages of self destruction before salvation by therapy beckons.
All in all, it's a very likeable movie hitting all the familiar stages of a rock/pop star saga of the non-tragic variety - emotionally crucial childhood and youth, early struggle with meeting key musical partner, success, excess and heartbreak, more excess (this being the 70s) and self destruction, hitting rock bottom, turning one's life around, happy ending. And you end it humming - what more can one want of a pop star bio pic?
The cinematography has flair, as when child!Reggie bursts into his black and white memories. Since I don't know much about Elton John's real life, I can't comment on the veracity of anyone's presentation. Though of course it didn't escape my notice Elton John is a co-producer, which makes the fact that manager/lover John Reid is, along with the parents, the villain of this movie, a heartless bastard first seducing and then exploiting and emotionally abusing our hero, come with a flavor of "the ex, according to the ex". But again: for all I know, Reid was/is (no idea whether he's still alive) exactly like that. (He's also played by Richard Madden, and since this movie isn't coy about its hero's homosexuality, it means we get a sex scene.) If Reid falls into the evil manager type of rock mythology villainy, the parents are a more unusual (in fiction, not real life) variation of abusive, because it's not the physical variety - they're instead narcissstic and cold (Mum) and mostly absent and cold (Dad, with the added insult to injury he's later shown to be able to have a warm relationship with his sons from his next marriage), and the movie is able to get across that this is absolutely terrible and deeply scarring in a way that's often missing in fictional abuse presentations, when the writers seem to think it needs to be physical to hurt.
On the other end of the emotional scale, there's songwriting partner Bernie Taupin the lyricist who would be Mr. Right to Reid's Mr. Wrong except that he's straight and very gently lets our hero down when young Reggie/Elton goes for a kiss early on by telling him he loves him like a brother. Bernie is played by Jamie Bell (whom I still can't see without marvelling how the kid has grown each time, courtesy of having encountered him first as Billy Elliot - look, it took me eons to get over this child encounter thing with Christian Bale, too!), and their songwriting sequences are lovely, though too few - I mean, I can understand why the movie went for the drama, but I'd love to have had more songwriting with Bernie and less abuse with John Reid. Elton John himself is payed by two great red haired kids at different ages and then by Taron Egerton who manages the transition from Reggie Dwighth to developing the Elton John persona beautifully, can sing and keeps the vulnerability alive even when Elton is taking out his misery on people not responsible for it in the later stages of self destruction before salvation by therapy beckons.
All in all, it's a very likeable movie hitting all the familiar stages of a rock/pop star saga of the non-tragic variety - emotionally crucial childhood and youth, early struggle with meeting key musical partner, success, excess and heartbreak, more excess (this being the 70s) and self destruction, hitting rock bottom, turning one's life around, happy ending. And you end it humming - what more can one want of a pop star bio pic?
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