Rocketman: Review

It's been a while since I've had the urge or motivation to write on this blog. It's probably laziness or maybe it's something else. Despite the big blockbusters, the fantastical finale's we've all been lucky enough to get over the last couple of months there hasn't been a recent studio film that has made me think for a long time. A film that engaged me enough that I stopped eating my popcorn and never diverted my attention.

Last year we got the Oscar nominated hit Bohemian Rhapsody. It was a film I saw twice at the cinema and wholly enjoyed as a celebration of Queen and Freddie Mercury. Was it truthful? No, it's a film not a documentary. But while the dramatisation didn't bother me I always felt like there was something missing. Maybe it was the toned down colour pallet or the sidestepping around some of the more obvious facts of Freddie's life but there were elements of it which where disappointing. It wasn't honest enough to be fact and not flamboyant enough to be fantasy.

The latest addition to the British Music Avengers is Elton John (I'm waiting for the multi-million pound team up with David Bowie). On the page this film seems to follow in a lot of the music bio-pic beats Bohemian Rhapsody used. However on screen...

It's colourful, it's raw, and it's a weird kind of honest. Elton John is in a weird position as a performer where being anything but honest would be a strange move. The documentary Tantrums and Tiaras (Made by his husband David Furnish in 1995) already told the world what kind of a man Elton could be. The way he treated those close to him was at times horrific but I have a strange respect for the fact he allowed it to be made and published. Similarly, Rocketman, while not fully depicting the venom his tantrums could produce, never does portray him as somebody particularly nice. He is someone who constantly felt guilty for being who he was and while his childhood and the sudden wealth and fame explains his fragile mental state it doesn't excuse him and the film doesn't let it excuse him. I respect that kind of honesty.

In many ways Rocketman with its colours and whiplash jumps between dramatic highs and devastating lows is more true to him as a person than a documentary ever could be. From the first scene we see him in re-hab, comically strutting in in an outrageous devil-like outfit. The whole film is re-counted through his, possibly unreliable, perspective which makes the joyous musical moments seem just as natural as two people talking in a room. The Saturday Night sequence has to be my favourite and if I have one major complaint it would be that there weren't more of these musical scenes, but then again this film isn't strictly speaking a musical... It's kind of half a musical.

What I loved about this film was that it tried to do something different. Elton John isn't as well-loved a figure as Freddie Mercury which I think gave the director and cinematographer more the play with. The whole film is blocked out like a stage show, further adding to the constructed musical-like trip that his life is portrayed as. Sometimes when songs are sung it isn't made into a big dance number. These more intimate moments never played a song in its entirety, instead using the lyrics as a kind of poetry to invoke emotions. I thought this was a cleaver idea and while overused did bring something more powerful to the film. Elton writes intimate songs so using them this way seemed fitting. I did prefer them over a lot of the dialogue which at times felt unneeded and a bit on-the-nose. While I understand that his straight marriage isn't important to the film dramatically I would have liked a little more about that time in his life. Did she know he was gay? Did she divorce him because she found out or because of something else entirely? Maybe it was out of respect to her that the scene is short but it did seem jarring that such a big part of the lie he lived played such a small roll.

So, let's talk acting. Taron Egerton is good, great even. I've been a fan of his since Eddie the Eagle and he plays a fantastic version of Elton John. But that's all it is. It's a version and at times I just couldn't bring myself to believe him. Perhaps he is just too likeable to play somebody who at times should be very hard to like. Richard Madden was great as his seductive and brutally cruel manager and Bryce Dallas Howard was perfectly detestable as his mother. I saw in an article that the studio had wanted to tone down the sex and drugs in the screenplay to which Elton John protested that he hadn't led a PG-13 life. Overall I think the rating was right for this film, toning it down would have made something terribly shallow. I did hear somewhere that Rocketman is the first major studio film to contain a gay sex scene. To be honest I thought that was b-s until I looked it up... Just goes to show how much catch-up the film industry still needs to do. For that alone I think it's a film that will be remembered over others that have come before it.

To conclude...

Rocketman isn't perfect. Between the musical sequences and its heartbreaking honesty it has moments of clunkiness and awkwardness but all of that is intrinsic of the man himself. At the core of the film is an apology, not for being who he is but for acting the way he did. It decided to play it risky and I think that paid off and opens the film to more richer interpretations and wider themes. The best thing they did was to fully express his music in the true context that we never got to see, so even if the story itself isn't something that interests you then it can still be watched as the celebration of a man's life and the music that orchestrated it.

6/10