BEFORE: It's the last day of "Based on a True Story" week, this is the big one. I've been trying to find my way to this one for a while now, and this seems like the perfect opportunity. After this I still need to find a way to work in "Bohemian Rhapsody", which was released the year before this one, but is quite a bit harder to link to, now that Mike Myers is semi-retired. I must remember to look for other films with Rami Malek in them.
Tate Donovan carries over again from "The Upside", that's 3 in a row for him. Will follow a different link tomorrow, and I'm just three Idris Elba films away from getting back to World War II stuff.
AFTER: Wow, I'm kind of blown away by this one. Why the heck wasn't this nominated for Best Picture last year? To me, it's better than at least two of the films that were nominated, and I'm not afraid to name names - "Little Women" in particular, and it would have edged out two others, based solely on my completely unscientific rating system. OK, maybe musicals don't tend to do so well come Oscar time, but then, what about "Chicago"? What about "The Sound of Music"? Huh? Would it have killed anyone to have 10 Best Picture nominees last year instead of 9?
The year before last, we had "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "A Star Is Born" nominated. This is a similar subject matter as "Bohemian Rhapsody" (1970's rockers) and also it's a bit like a gay "A Star Is Born" told in the "break into song" style of "Mamma Mia!". Does that make sense? Where's the love? Instead this film was only nominated for 1 Oscar, for the original song "I'm Gonna Love Me Again", and it won that award. Perfect score, 1 for 1. Where's the love for Taron Egerton, though? Technically this format is now called "jukebox musical", meaning there's just enough story to get from one song to the next, like in "Rock of Ages". But may I suggest "musical bio-fic" instead?
If I'm correct, the genesis of this film goes back to Taron Egerton singing "I'm Still Standing" in the animated film "Sing", as the voice of the teen gorilla. He sings that song again here as Elton John, and now he both looks and sounds the part as he re-creates one of the cheesiest music videos of the 1980's, shot for shot. (Umm, I think, please don't make me go back and watch the original.). For the kids out there, I should explain that a "music video" is sort of like a short film that's a commercial for a record, and they used to air on a channel that we called MTV, before anybody knew about "Road Rules" or "Teen Mom" or "Jersey Shore". I should probably also explain to the kids that a "record" was what we used to call a flat disc that contained a song or series of songs, and we had to go and buy them in a "record store" before everything was digitally downloadable.
The film, right. This is a bit unusual because clearly there wasn't much of an attempt to tell Elton John's story exactly as it happened, and that may be a bone of contention for some people, especially hardcore EJ fans. There's a lot of metaphor involved, like Elton in rehab having a conversation with his younger self (inner child) which is narratively impossible. But it still may represent what goes on as part of the rehab/healing/recovery process, so on that level, it works.
Similarly, for the years when Elton was performing and touring hard, but also getting addicted to drugs and alcohol, there's a sequence where he's rescued from his swimming pool after taking a load of pills and trying to kill himself in the middle of a party with family and friends. Meanwhile he's drifting in and out of consciousness, but also singing lyrics from "Rocket Man" while refusing the oxygen mask that the paramedics are trying to put on him. You'd think that the ambulance would take him to the hospital, but instead it pulls into a wide-open garage in a stadium, a team of doctors and assistants put him on a gurney and pump his stomach, then he's whirled around, dressed in a costume and dragged on to a stage to perform for his fans. I'm guessing that these events never happened to Elton John in real life, but even if it didn't, it's a powerful statement about how he probably felt in those whirlwind days, just like a cog on an assembly line, a puppet being made to perform.
The sequence ends with Elton on stage, with flames and smoke coming out of his feet, while slowly rising up from the crowd and shooting into the sky, a literal Rocket Man. Another metaphor, but for the exhilaration that came with performing in front of such a large crowd. This is some brilliant storytelling, even though it's in the realm of the ridiculous. After exploding like a firework, we next see him on a plane that was flying overhead, which suggests that due to the drugs and alcohol, he might frequently wake up in situations and have no memory of how he got there. This happens again after another party where he wakes up in his L.A. mansion and has to ask a drag queen opening the curtains where he is.
Then there's Elton's brief marriage to a German recording engineer - this part of the story gets glossed over, which is exactly what I was afraid of happening. Elton's marriage (to a woman) seems to me to be one of the most interesting chapters in his personal history, and absolutely none of the details are explored. OK, they duet together on an impromptu "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me" with some nice harmony, then next we know, they're at the wedding ceremony, and then they're seen living together, but coming out of separate bedrooms in the morning, followed by Elton drinking a mimosa and breaking down, saying "Sorry." WHAT? Can we get some more details here, what exactly transpired? How come we can view a scene of Elton in bed with his first boyfriend, but not with his wife? This seems unfair (and a bit hetero-phobic), is it just because the real Elton didn't want to be reminded of this chapter in his life? It happened, man, own it.
Instead, it's very clear that Bernie Taupin loved Elton (only not it that way, like a brother) and Elton probably loved Bernie back (umm, yeah, probably in that way). Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you probably don't mess up a songwriting partnership between two people who have never had an argument, not in almost 50 years of working together, by letting it get complicated. OK, maybe it was always complicated, or at least awkward, but you can't argue with success.
I feel the need to point out that I'm not even that much of an Elton John fan - sure, his music's always been there on the classic rock stations, and I know many of his songs. Or I should say that I THOUGHT I knew many of his songs, but it turns out that I've really been mishearing many of the lyrics for decades, or not bothering to look up the lyrics that I didn't understand. Particularly on the fast songs like "Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)", where he really didn't enunciate the words very well. I'd get as far as "Don't give me none of that aggravation..." but then I really couldn't tell you what the next line was, even while listening to the song. I know there's something about a switchblade and a motorbike, but I'm not sure what he's saying in the line before that. Now that I've watched the film with the closed captions on, many of Bernie Taupin's lyrics have become much clearer, and I sort of regret not taking any time over the last two decades to research the song lyrics. Look, I've been very busy, OK? "Get about as oiled as a diesel train / Gonna set this dance alight". Huh, so THAT'S what he was saying. or "I'm a juvenile product of the working class / Whose best friend floats in the bottom of a glass." Damn, it's poetry and it's been eluding me for how long?
Or take another song, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", another one that it's been hard for me to understand because of Elton's use of falsetto. The real lyric is "Back to the howling old owl in the woods / Hunting the horny back toad." I guess I thought he was singing "Back to the Hollywood town in the world / Hunting the horny black toe." Which, I realize now, doesn't make much sense. But now I'm not likely to forget the real lyrics the way they're supposed to be, I think. And I was fairly sure that in the original song "Rocket Man" the lyrics were "I miss my wife", but they changed it to "I miss my life" for this film.
I think if I had been an Elton John fan, this would have been an easy "8", for sure. In the end it doesn't really matter if some of the songs were out of sequence (sung in the wrong years), or if the events didn't really shake down accurately, not when the end result is so artistically constructed, somehow it ends up being more honest and insightful than the truth.
Also starring Taron Egerton (last seen in "Billionaire Boys Club"), Jamie Bell (last seen in "Defiance"), Richard Madden (last seen in "1917"), Bryce Dallas Howard (last seen in "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"), Gemma Jones (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Steven Mackintosh (last seen in "The Muppet Christmas Carol"), Tom Bennett (last seen in "Mascots"), Charlie Rowe (last seen in "Pirate Radio"), Stephen Graham (last seen in "The Irishman"), Matthew Illesley, Kit Connor, Ophelia Lovibond (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy"), Rachel Muldoon, Celinde Schoenmaker, Harriet Walter (last seen in "The Sense of an Ending"), Sharon D. Clarke, Peter O'Hanlon, Ross Farrelly, Evan Walsh, Jason Pennycooke.
RATING: 7 out of 10 piano lessons
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