THE STRUGGLE TO GET THE MUSICAL BIOPIC RIGHT
By Felix Hughes
"The most disgraceful shit I've ever had to endure."
This is how Sex Pistols frontman John Lyndon described the unauthorized miniseries on the band 'Pistol'. Lyndon isn't the only musician to criticise a biopic on their lives; keyboardist for The Doors, Ray Manzarek criticised the biopic chronicling the lives of Jim Morrison and the band as not "based on love" but "in madness and chaos" due to the portrayal of Morrison as a "violent, drunk fool."
Music biopics occupy a strange place in the Hollywood landscape. On the one hand, they are often some of the biggest box office draws around: Bohemian Rhapsody, chronicling the life and times of Freddie Mercury and Queen, brought in $903 billion, while Walk the Line, a movie about Johnny Cash, grossed $186 million off a $28 million budget.
And yet, there is almost always some form of backlash against a newly released biopic, whether from critics or audiences. Bohemian Rhapsody, despite its box office and awards success, was heavily criticized by many critics, referring to it as "sanitised," "self-indulgent," and "heavy-handed." This backlash against musical biopics is not just from the critics. General moviegoers have begun to turn away from these types of films, With five musical biopics released last year, and four (Better Man, Piece by Piece, Back to Black and One Love) failing at the box office. While, A Complete Unknown has been a success across the board, it is the exception not the rule. With this, it is fair to say that a sense of 'musical biopic fatigue' has begun to develop, but why exactly has this come about for a subgenre that should, in theory, be strong bets for success given the fan bases that come with their subject matters?
When fans of great bands or singers learn that a movie is being made about their heroes, a sense of expectation arises. As the likes of Freddie Mercury are held up as legendary, almost mythic figures on account of their talent, fans want the biopic to allow us to gain an understanding of their genius. There is already an issue here, evoking the old saying ’never meet your heroes,’ as the idea of their genius will always be better in our imagination than in reality. However, that does not mean that a good musical biopic can not capture an aspect of said legend and explore it in an interesting way. Some may point to the portrayal of Elton John in Rocketman, a movie that leaned into the Elton persona while still exploring the trials and tribulations of his life.
People want something that will, if nothing else, capture that myth to a degree and shine a light on what made the artist the way they are. However, these musical biopics often fail to do that. Instead, they often take a Wikipedia-article-approach in which the film rallies off the biggest events of an artist's life without going in-depth about the importance of said events. This can create a movie that feels frustrating in its inability to truly tell us something meaningful about its subject matter, something that goes beyond a simple search result, and cuts to the heart of what made them who they were.
On occasion, this can work. Baz Luhrmann's Elvis perfectly captures the scale of Elvis's fame and the power behind what he became, and the kinetic music video style of the movie conveyed that scale perfectly to make the runtime length feel breathless and exciting.
Yet other biopics bite off far more than they can chew. This can be seen in All Eyez on Me a biopic of the late rapper Tupac Shakur (or 2Pac). Coming in at a runtime of 2 hours and 19 minutes, the movie attempts to cram in every detail of the rappers 25 years life, which means covering his relationship with his political activist mother, clashes with the law, time in jail, four albums, his relationship with the likes of Dr. Dre and the Notorious B.I.G, as well as the shocking nature of his murder. This is a lot to cover, and it is no surprise that the film was met with near-universal disapproval, decried for being a "surface exploitation" of an icon.
A greatest hits style run-through of an artist's life won't tell even casual fans anything they don't already know. What they want to see is an intimate portrayal of these icons that focuses on exploring who these people are and what made them great or unique, something that does not necessarily need a full life story to portray but can be explored in carefully chosen intimate moments.
A relevant case study for this comes from two contrasting biopics on Steve Jobs – they are not musical biopics but relevant nonetheless. In Joshua Michael Sterns's movie Jobs, 30 years of Job's life is covered, from dropping out of college to introducing the iPod. Just as with All Eyez, Sterns's movie was met with poor reviews and, again, criticism for a "skin-deep portrayal" of such a complex and influential figure. A few years later, another Steve Jobs biopic came out by Danny Boyles entitled Steve Jobs. Rather than portray the inventor's entire life, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin opted to explore the man through three contained key events of his life and how these events shaped the man he was. This allowed for three interconnected snapshots of Jobs' life to be explored in depth and to get to the centre of who the film thought he was: a man passionate about what he was creating, even if that made him look cruel. Anyone can go to Wikipedia and get a snapshot of a musician's life and times, but what they can't do is feel what that person was like and what made them tick. A film can do that, but not if it imitates a Wikipedia article, as many do. It's only going to push the genre further into the ground.
However, the problem of many musical biopics goes deeper than a rushed story. As previously mentioned, while it's often a problem, it doesn't necessarily need to be bad (that goes for any biopic). Any biopic is complicated by the fact that people want ‘the truth’, in addition to being entertained.It seems every time a new musical biopic comes out, there is an accusation that the filmmakers have embellished the truth. Perhaps no movie is more guilty of this issue than the aforementioned 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' with the film telling some somewhat egregious lies in the name of cinematic licence. For instance, the fact that Freddie Mercury did not have AIDs before the live AIDS concert but was diagnosed two years after in 1987. It is also not true that Queen had not played together for years before Live Aid. On the contrary, they had, in fact, just finished touring two months before the concert. The historical inaccuracies that plague the musical biopic are perhaps the biggest criticism these movies get, as they are all guilty of it to some degree. Certainly, some of these inaccuracies are small and do no disservice to the movie, its content or the audience; like the fact that “Crocodile Rock” wasn't played at Elton John's first US concert, as is depicted in the movie about his life 'Rocketman.' However, some inaccuracies, like the one in Bohemian Rhapsody, are so egregious that it is hard not to feel insulted as an audience member that you are essentially being lied to, and this practice has undoubtedly upset a lot of viewers.
One could argue that historical inaccuracies don't affect the quality of a film. Instead, they might argue that the film is a sort of 'bubble' wherein we should worry about how good the film is at telling the story it wants to tell as opposed to how good it is telling the story of a band or musician. They might point to how in the N.W.A biopic, Straight Outta Compton, the writing of the song “Fuck Tha Police” is portrayed as occurring following the group's encounter with racist police officers. While this isn't the case in real life, this scene's implementation provides a stirring representation of the police brutality that inspired the song.
Yet, if one wants to watch a musical biopic in the hope of understanding an artist's legend better, they are never going to get that if the filmmakers don't stay true to that artist's vision. In some ways, a director or scriptwriter working on a musical biopic can't simply have their vision of the film, but they must have one that fits into the artist's style, personality and legend. They can't have a vision for what they want to do, so they bend their subject matter’s life to fit that vision. To do that would mean a failure to truly get to the centre of what made these people achieve what they did.
Furthermore, from a purely filmmaking perspective, a failure to respect historical accuracy heavily implies a desire to cut corners with one's art and a failure to embrace the subject matter. Most critically panned musical biopics are heavy on historical inaccuracy, while the better ones often strongly try to pursue the truth. When analysing a particular figure, you should engross yourself in every detail of their lives to discern what is necessary to include, agonising over every little detail as it may just turn out to be important in shaping the overall narrative. You can't expect to form a satisfying portrait of the subject matter if you ignore even large details, as Bohemian Rhapsody does.
These two key issues embody much of what people have come to criticise about musical biopics. The critical and commercial success of A Complete Unknown has shown that there is still life in the subgenre yet, even as all other musical biopics released in the past year flopped. Perhaps the multiple flops highlight a degree of 'musical biopic fatigue,' as audiences find the formula stale and unsatisfying, but there is always a way forward. Could the pure ambition of making four separate Beatles films, all to release simultaneously, create a cinematic event that revolutionises the way we see the musical biopic? Or could it flop hard enough to scare studios away from making anymore?
Banner Image courtesy of Nerdist