Goodbye Biopic Road- Rocketman

The idea of judging a biopic is quite daunting. While you can say what you want about the style of the picture, by commenting on the plot, themes or characters, I feel you risk making statements on the real life of the film's subject. So from here forward, please know that I only comment on the story of Elton John that we see in Rocketman, not in the real world.

I should start off with one minor criticism, in that the film at times did not rely on Taron Egerton's superb acting to carry. To say that a musical film should perhaps rely less on music seems a bit asinine, however while the musical numbers are well spaced, they can still sometimes feel forced in lyrical sense. Where the musical tone of a song could match the feeling of a scene, the lyrical meaning of the song often did not, leading to the impression of trying to shoehorn songs into the two hour runtime. Adding to this, during the climatic drug fuelled culmination of Elton's crisis, a 'flashing before your eyes' montage of every problem in his life felt unnecessary, even taking away from the pain shown in the present. A credit to Egerton's portrayal was his ability to wordlessly both show and hide his outer glee and inner torture at different stages, and I feel there were moments that Egerton should have been given more authority to control these scenes.

Where Fletcher's recent Bohemian Rhapsody felt more a timeline of Freddie Mercury's life, Rocketman managed to restructure the idea of a biopic. We start, knowing full well that Reginald Dwight is going to face the soaring highs and crashing lows that every rockstar in film ends up facing, and with Elton John the highs will be higher and the lows lower. As a child and young man, he is plagued with success, casually rocketing through achievements and cementing himself as a star, seemingly without a hitch. It is however a translucent image of triumph, with a backdrop of both affection-devoid parents and the absence of true love backseat driving his ascension to stardom. The Troubadour crowd floating away with Elton is almost parallel to the cinema audience, feeling as though this never-ending rocket of success is going to miss the moon and keep going past the stars, leaving Reggie's problems far behind.

Yet, Rocketman does not follow the biopic recipe of shouting that it is fame that creates these troubles. What I feel the film did best was instead to show that success, with all its sequins and feathers, cannot erase these problems. Famous or not, Elton was not loved by his father. At the height of his fame, we hear the heartbreaking 'True love is hard to come by, so we try and make do instead'. Fame did not bring him the ability to write his lyrics, or stand up to his mother. We see, side-by-side, that Elton's fame does not let him overcome Reggie's obstacles.

And even after this, he is brought thundering even further down. Despite knowing that the rockstar would end up winged, horned and glittered in an AA classroom, I still felt shocked to see Elton humbled and stripped (albeit in a rather heavy handed metaphor of literally shedding his disguise through therapy). The past ninety minutes of ecstasy and colour- now confined to a half-mopped rehab hallway. Egerton convinces us this is the end of Elton John, no longer able to conjure music out of thin air. However, I feel it is no confidence that after tearing off the devil horns, the Elton in the classroom more closely resembles a phoenix. With a push from Jamie Bell's Bernie, and left truly alone with a piano for the first time since creating 'Your Song', it is away from the ups and downs of fame that Elton finally starts to write his own song.

Going into Dexter Fletcher's Rocketman, I was unsure as to whether I was about to be shown a true representation of the life of England's all-time most successful musician, or be given a boilerplate rise and fall story. However, it is with stellar acting, in particularly Taron Egerton's latest flex of talent, prismatic colours and Fletcher's non-chronological run at the biopic genre that Rocketman will earn its star on the Walk of Fame.