![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexRocketman is the story of the rise and fall of Elton John. Since the story is public and well-known I'm going to treat everything as not a spoiler. The movie's format and treatment were a surprise to me since the trailer didn't hint at any of it. If you'd rather be unspoiled by that you should probably not read the entire thing. I am not a fan of musicals and not a great Elton John lover. That said, the unpleasantness of this would be a drawback no matter what. (1/5 stars)
The movie begins with Elton John flouncing into what turns out to be an AA-style rehab group. The group facilitator asks what he was like as a child, and the story is mostly told through flashback. Elton John was apparently closely involved in the movie's production, so I'm going to assume this is some kind of "approved" biography, in which case his parents were fucking awful human beings, bordering on emotionally abusive, and his manager was a manipulative piece of shit.
Frankly, nobody in this movie comes off as particularly sympathetic or likable except possibly Bernie Taupin, John's lifelong collaborator. But Taupin plays a peripheral role in this telling, being offscreen more than on. Jamie Bell's performance is fine, but there's so little there it's hard to care much.
The movie mostly doesn't spare Elton John (Taron Egerton) either. He starts off by listing his flaws, including drug and alcohol addiction, and "problems" with shopping. He also comes across as deeply damaged, narcissistic, and borderline abusive to people close to him. You could say that given the trauma that's portrayed starting in his childhood he just didn't know better; he is simply repeating traumatic behaviors he learned, and never did mature as an emotionally adult human. Regardless of the reasoning, it's deeply unpleasant to watch.
Making it a musical doesn't help - it hurts. The movie is a full-on musical, with people breaking into song and dance numbers woven into the plot. My personal distaste for music aside, the result is something that is very hard to parse. Some scenes are quite literal, with standard dialog and action. John plays his music-as-music within a scene and it's "just" a song. In other cases, the music becomes part of a transformative scene. I'm pretty sure nobody actually levitated while listening to him play, so that part is allegorical. Then there are some other bits that are harder to parse - are we to take them literally, or allegorically?
One way to look at this is to compare with the recent Bohemian Rhapsody. Where that movie told the story of the music, Rocketman is trying to tell it story through the music. When the characters break into song it's often to give you the reactions/contexts/import of the lyrics as they fit into that part of the story. For example, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" is used in the film at the point where Taupin actually leaves John. This isn't precisely historical, but it's roughly accurate - Taupin wrote the lyrics to express his desire to get away from the glitz of rockstar-dom and back to his simpler life.
You get about two hours of this, and then the movie just... ends. John leaves rehab, and everything that's happened since (his second marriage, his kids) is just told via flashcards. This is the most unsatisfying kind of payoff I can imagine. Having endured vicarious abuse and nastiness for two hours, I'd like to see something better than "and then he left rehab mostly OK. The End."
There's no payoff in that, and no sense that you have shaken off or gotten past the nastiness. Maybe that's intentional? I don't know and mostly I don't care. I wanted big warnings up front and something better at the end.
The movie begins with Elton John flouncing into what turns out to be an AA-style rehab group. The group facilitator asks what he was like as a child, and the story is mostly told through flashback. Elton John was apparently closely involved in the movie's production, so I'm going to assume this is some kind of "approved" biography, in which case his parents were fucking awful human beings, bordering on emotionally abusive, and his manager was a manipulative piece of shit.
Frankly, nobody in this movie comes off as particularly sympathetic or likable except possibly Bernie Taupin, John's lifelong collaborator. But Taupin plays a peripheral role in this telling, being offscreen more than on. Jamie Bell's performance is fine, but there's so little there it's hard to care much.
The movie mostly doesn't spare Elton John (Taron Egerton) either. He starts off by listing his flaws, including drug and alcohol addiction, and "problems" with shopping. He also comes across as deeply damaged, narcissistic, and borderline abusive to people close to him. You could say that given the trauma that's portrayed starting in his childhood he just didn't know better; he is simply repeating traumatic behaviors he learned, and never did mature as an emotionally adult human. Regardless of the reasoning, it's deeply unpleasant to watch.
Making it a musical doesn't help - it hurts. The movie is a full-on musical, with people breaking into song and dance numbers woven into the plot. My personal distaste for music aside, the result is something that is very hard to parse. Some scenes are quite literal, with standard dialog and action. John plays his music-as-music within a scene and it's "just" a song. In other cases, the music becomes part of a transformative scene. I'm pretty sure nobody actually levitated while listening to him play, so that part is allegorical. Then there are some other bits that are harder to parse - are we to take them literally, or allegorically?
One way to look at this is to compare with the recent Bohemian Rhapsody. Where that movie told the story of the music, Rocketman is trying to tell it story through the music. When the characters break into song it's often to give you the reactions/contexts/import of the lyrics as they fit into that part of the story. For example, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" is used in the film at the point where Taupin actually leaves John. This isn't precisely historical, but it's roughly accurate - Taupin wrote the lyrics to express his desire to get away from the glitz of rockstar-dom and back to his simpler life.
You get about two hours of this, and then the movie just... ends. John leaves rehab, and everything that's happened since (his second marriage, his kids) is just told via flashcards. This is the most unsatisfying kind of payoff I can imagine. Having endured vicarious abuse and nastiness for two hours, I'd like to see something better than "and then he left rehab mostly OK. The End."
There's no payoff in that, and no sense that you have shaken off or gotten past the nastiness. Maybe that's intentional? I don't know and mostly I don't care. I wanted big warnings up front and something better at the end.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-04 06:15 pm (UTC)'unpleasantness of this would be a drawback no matter what'
Even more to back up my own distaste for him and his music. It's never sat well with me, and it's not for anything specifiable. It's like my distaste for red beets: I should like them because I like the color red and the taste of sweetness, but they just make me wanna upchuck.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-05 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-06 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-06 01:41 am (UTC)