Honesty on Screen

Good morning Consumers, This is Please Consume, The newsletter that loves movies as much as David Cross hated being in Alvin & The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.

Rocketman (2019)

Written by Tyler Clark

When talking about music biopics it is easy to get homogenized with the same story told over and over again, well this week I can guarantee you we have a wonderful slate of movies that tell the story of these folks lives in interesting and unconventional ways, so let’s dive into our first film with Rocketman!

What Sets It Apart?

I’m a big fan of this movie, and it always broke my heart just a little bit that it ended up being the bridesmaid to the much less interesting (or just good) Bohemian Rhapsody. Rhapsody had the narrative of “we’re finally making this!” and “Isn’t this a miracle it got made!” After firing its director for being a monstrous human being, they brought on Dexter Fletcher to just keep the film cruising. Mix that with a safe story we can use as a vehicle for great music and BAM! You got yourself four Oscars (including one for editing, which is the most inexplicable thing I’ve read all day).

But with all that being said, Rocketman actively pushes against many of the narratives Rhapsody had. It didn’t have the overdue narrative because its subject is thankfully still with us. It didn’t have the production issues Rhapsody had. From what I can tell from interviews, the team that made this got along quite nicely, and director Dexter Fletcher, yes, the same one, actually had time to craft the film he wanted to make.

But even in the formal choices it makes, it is head and shoulders above Bohemian Rhapsody,Walk the Line, or Get On Up. From its non-literal narrative device to utilizing and recontextualizing the iconography around Elton John’s persona, to the fact that it’s an actual musical with its performance numbers are non-dialectic or throw in surrealist imagery to make you feel like you are floating through the Wizard of Oz-esque mind of Elton John.

Honesty on Screen

This film gets a lot of mileage out of the fact that Elton John himself was very involved in its development. Unlike many biopics in which the family is heavily involved and wants to create a nicer, more sanitized version of this figure's life, Elton John has no qualms with making himself the bad guy.

He is telling an honest story about the feelings of loneliness and isolation as a gay man in the 1960s-80s. He takes these songs he wrote with Bernie Taupin and breathes new life into them with new meaning and gives a new type of emotional weight.

He pulls zero punches and gives an honest account not of what happened (no biopic will tell the true story of what actually happened) but the emotions that carried along through these iconic moments in the history of rock n’ roll.

Today’s Clip

With all that in mind, let’s take a look at today's scene. It’s the moment that we get in every single one of these movies: the part where the musician feels awkward on stage until he explodes with musical talent and the crowd goes wild. But unlike those movies, Fletcher and John take the extra step. They don’t settle for the conventional showcasing of this moment; they figure out how to double it and make you feel more in it than if you had just watched archival footage.