I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I'm a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone
Oh man, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this movie. I’m apathetic towards biopics and I barely know any Elton John songs outside the Disney ones (yes, I’m a heathen, my excuse is that I didn’t get to America until 1995 and some combination of Britney and N’Sync consumed my formative years) but I had a big doofus grin throughout this movie and discovered a lot more sympathy for a celebrity I had in the back of my head as “the eccentric old dude who seems nice enough but probably doesn’t have all his marbles?”. That’s not because the film glamorizes Elton John by any means - it literally starts out with him declaring he’s done a great many horrible things, and concludes with him sighing that he’s been a cunt since 1975 - but you see the man inside the glittery bird costume, broken but trying, and I think that makes it a success in my book.
It’s a “musical fantasy” - honestly, a straight-up musical - that hits some pretty familiar narrative beats: main character bursts into rehab in the opening, looking like he needs a shower, a shave, and a hug, and now we’ll learn how he got there. No surprises, but it’s a clever way of unspooling his character arc as the movie progresses, because we watch him start his account with flat-out lies - “my dad was great, always there for me” - and then as he keeps going, it starts pouring out of him and he can’t help but begin to confront the truth. One character arc, the literal arc, is about his downfall, but the other one - the one behind it - is about his healing. It’s not an “X happened, then Y happened” kinda biopic, the journey here is as much inward as temporal - this is Elton, coming back to face the words a musician early in his career told him: “You gotta kill the person you were born as in order to become the person you want to be.” But who is the person Elton wants to be? What if the person he wants to be is just... himself?
And who is that, anyways? What I love about the movie is how it’s interested in what’s behind all the glam, the glitter, the outrageous costumes and crazy heels and rock n’roll - but it’s not afraid of those things either. You don’t have to be one or the other, extrovert or introvert, dazzling showman or a shy kid who only ever wanted to play for himself. Because the man IS fucking fabulous, he clearly had big emotions and a big life, and what I love about this movie is how it’s not afraid to throw itself into that, the same way camp is a kind of defiance against both the people who take life too seriously, and the people who don’t take it seriously enough. It punctuates again and again that this whole thing is about the hole in Elton’s heart, the hole that one’s parents are supposed to fill, and how his outrageous talents both lift him out of there and then give him too many things to fill it with — luxury clothes, booze, sex, drugs, eating disorders, pushing away the only people who care for him as if self-hatred were its own addiction. It’s a bottomless pit, and the struggle Elton faces is whether there’s anything worth salvaging at the bottom of it. It doesn’t sound like a very heroic choice, but it is: choosing life.
Some notes I jotted down right after watching, spoilers under the cut:
There were some things I didn’t think worked as well, though it wasn’t that they were bad, just that I wish there was more there.
For example, I thought that the final sequence where the characters from his past re-appear in this kind of cliched therapy sequence felt a bit too on-the-nose and forced, or at least clunky compared to the deftness of many of the earlier scenes. As a climax, it didn’t really land for me. This is part of my general wish that the story had more “meat” on it — i.e., a bit more prose and less verse — because it feels like it should be building up to this realization that Bernie was the one who truly loved him this whole time (not romantically I mean, but, in the more meaningful sense, properly). Because Bernie essentially becomes a peripheral character after their initial honeymoon — he’s always kinda in the background, but they drift apart over the years to underline Elton’s fall — so their relationship doesn’t have as much weight as it could’ve to me even though it is a thread that runs throughout the movie.
Don’t get me wrong — the scenes they have together are sublime, especially that “Your Song” scene, where the look Elton gives him really makes me wonder if Elton’s aborted kiss really was just a young man confusing his momentary giddiness for a crush. Jamie Bell gives this wonderfully gentle performance that keeps him as this North star in your mind, the one you want Elton to find home by. I just wanted more, especially in the latter half of the film, because I think the core of this film is about a love story, between Elton John and the things that save him: his best friend, and his love for music.
That’s my critique of the film in general, if I had to have one — despite running over two hours long, there’s some parts that feel oddly compressed or skimpy. John Reid, Richard Madden in an incredible performance as Elton’s frighteningly intense yet undeniably attractive business (and pleasure!) partner with the Hugo Boss suit and smoldering black eyes, goes from what girls want the dude in Fifty Shades to be to an abusive, cold-blooded asshole in the span of what feels like two scenes and ten minutes. It’s like one second, Elton’s star is rising and he’s flying high — and then in the next, he’s snorting coke, fighting with John, and drinking too much. It is heavily implied that: 1) getting famous was synonymous with doing drugs at the time, and because of Elton’s personality he couldn’t brake (but I still wish they made this subtext a bit more text) and 2) that behind this lurch downwards is his inability to be honest about his sexuality — John, of course, wants him to marry a beard “for the business” — but it’s strange that that’s not brought up earlier as a theme, when he was secretly getting kissed by the trumpeter and then happily trysting with John.
“Living a double life”, though, is a huge theme in another way: it’s the contrast between Elton’s happy, extravagant show life and Reginald Dwight, a lonely little boy trapped inside a miserable man trapped inside a mansion that provides so much of the pathos in the “adult” years of the film. None of the fame and fortune have brought him love, only adoration. If that’s a familiar thesis in biopics about famous people, it still works for me here because Taron Egerton’s performance is just SO GOOD. He gives it his all in every moment, not just the big singing and dancing ones. Behind all the little drug-induced twitches and grimaces of self-loathing (but also just the tiiiny bit of ego all great performers have), you can see the sweet kid who deserved better, who just wants to “go home”, if only he could find it.
I think the fundamental reason behind my “I wish there were more stuff” is the fact the movie structures itself after a musical, and for musicals the non-singing parts are more about how you get from one big singing part to the other. That’s a hard space for a biopic, especially one that gets into pretty serious territory and has years to cover; song and dance end up competing with time for character work. But the director does something I think is really clever, though, and that’s to use those musical sequences as part of the story — the moments flow into the song, and the song crystallizes the moment/theme/feeling in this natural way. They’re not an excuse to check off Elton John’s biggest hits, but rather fulfill a cinematic purpose in capturing an emotional rather than factual truth.
Not just the songs, but there are a number of these deft little scenes I really liked because they make the “point” in a single shot/cut/image, with very little dialogue. Some examples:
- The first time Elton and Bernie meet, Bernie mentions the country song Elton’s prospective manager had just disparaged and Elton kinda smirks, then in the next beat realizes that maybe that was kinda asshole, and he clumsily hums out the first verse, and Bernie perks up and follows with the next, and soon they’re both banging on the diner table and singing it together with huge grins. What’s especially great about this scene is that you can’t figure out if they’re doing this in “reality” and everyone thinks they’re crazy, or if this is one of those musical fantasy sequences. The point is that the distinction between them doesn’t matter, because that sequence is about the feeling of the moment, and at that moment they feel connected. Love at first sight.
- The scene where many years later Elton, now successful and dare-we-say perhaps even hopeful that his father might accept him now, finds the man with his new house and family — and after the expected awkward intro it seems to be going ok, his father’s invited him to come sit and chat inside. So there’s his father sitting on the couch… and then this pair of boys, his new sons, comes over and he just wraps his arm around them so easily, and your gut sinks instantly, before it even cuts to Elton, whose face has shattered all at once
- Nice studio girl, lifting her voice with his in his darkest moment -> cut to wedding -> cut to morning at the house, each opening their own door and greeting each other with an excruciating level of politeness. Says it all in three scenes.
- The levitation during his performance at The Troubadour. PERFECT. You can say “this and this happened”, “and then he gave an amazing performance”, but that’s not as powerful as showing the feeling Elton John must’ve felt during that performance: a lonely little boy turned struggling young man who felt, for just a moment, that he could fly.
- Another musical sequence - Elton’s suicide attempt, where they carry him onto the ambulance and he keeps batting away the oxygen mask to keep singing. It works on so many levels because he’s just a kid who wants to sing, he’s the star who was born to sing, but he’s also a man who doesn’t want to live.
If you remember my Robin Hood review, you probably know that I would let Taron Egerton walk across my face in those kicky high-heeled boots up there and say “thank you” so you might think that my assessment of Rocketman, the new musical biopic in which he stars as Elton John, is a bit skewed. And I’d agree with you - I’m such a huge fan of Taron’s that it was definitely difficult for me to fully immerse myself in him playing this other real person (whom I’m also a fan of). And that disconnect, that slight gap between the layers of identity, should ruin everything - but instead, it created the most moving, fantastical, ambitious, heartbreaking biopic I’ve ever seen. How? Well...
The simple answer - because it’s all the conventions of a stage musical combined with the magic of film. It’s essentially a frame narrative set up like this - Elton has walked out of a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden to check himself into rehab. He arrives, and over the course of the film, tells his life story in group therapy. From the very first song, it’s clear that the movie is going to take you through a combination of memory, drug-fueled hallucinations, and dramatic confessions, and this fantastical conceit works so well on every level. It allows us to see Elton (born Reginald Dwight) as a young musical prodigy in his working-class upbringing in London; playing backup to blues and doo-wop groups from America; meeting Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) and creating a musical partnership that would last 50+ years; and striking it big in America, creating a rock ‘n roll persona that would grow to become one of the most larger-than-life and successful stage acts of all time. Oh and doing drugs and having gay sex.
Some thoughts:
First thing’s first - this is not a steeped-in-realism, this-is-exactly-how-it-happened story. The songs aren’t presented in the order they were written, some of them are remixed to include other characters besides Elton singing the verses because it fits their portion of the narrative better. This is more about using the music to show the way it felt for Elton as he made his way from child prodigy to rock superstar.
The beats are the same as most standard rock narratives - the rise, the fall, the redemption, they’re all here - but the combination of earnest heart and magical realism makes this the movie I wanted Bohemian Rhapsody to be (you know they’re going to get compared endlessly anyway) and THE standard to beat for telling the story of any queer artist’s life.
I say queer artist because the way the film is styled is pure musical theater drama. It feels camp it feels imaginative and most of all it feels queer. He’s literally crying out “I want love, just a different kind” and “I wish I was someone else” - the defining moment at the start of his performance career is a black man telling him “You have to kill the person you were born to be in order to become the person you wanna be” and he is awakened to the wide world of possibility when a gay black man kisses him. It’s like this movie was made to be an emotional crash course in queer culture, a magic mirror through which the viewer can feel what queerness feels like. It’s all the shifting, magical possibilities of a world you get to create for yourself - and, for many of us, the cost associated with it of heartbreak, loneliness, self-loathing, and disavowal from those whose approval we seek the most.
The casting all around is excellent, but the side-by-side picture comparisons during the end credits absolutely blew me away - the young man they got to play Elton as a child (Matthew Illesley) is not only the spitting image, but such a sweet, earnest kid. You fully buy into this being the most imaginative, talented young child you’ve ever seen who only wants some words of love and encouragement he’ll never get from his parents.
All I could think of when watching the Scottish piano teacher was Mrs. Badcrumble.
I love Bernie and Elton’s friendship, how it feels real and actually confronts Elton’s queerness head-on, and ends up being this beautiful, intimate male friendship that you just don’t see onscreen very much.
Did I Cry? Lord, at least three times. During the first “Your Song,” during “Rocketman” (burning out his fuse up here alone - *sob*) and during the final group therapy session. God, if you’re not invested I’m sure it feels cheesy, but everyone I was with was SO bought in, and it truly felt cathartic and really magical.
If this film doesn’t win the Oscar for Best Costumes, I will riot in the streets. The stage ensembles ALONE, but many of those were from Elton’s archives, or recreated from photographs. It’s the offstage clothes, all those horrifying, eye-watering paisley prints in velvet, corduroy, the fucking ASCOTS. Just beautifully, awfully, incredibly realized 70s styling. On a related note about these incredible stage outfits, literally how did the public not know Elton was gay. I’ll never understand it.
Movies like this make me feel like all young people did in the 70s was do drugs in the woods.
So a lot of to-do has been made about the sex scene between Taron Egerton and Richard Madden (playing Elton’s music manager, John Reid), obviously. I read that it’s the first major Hollywood studio film that has featured a gay male sex scene with actual nudity, which is kind of astonishing to me actually, but. I will say I think it was tastefully done, sexy without being gratuitously explicit, and honestly fairly brief for all the fuss that’s being made.
Also jesus it’s really fucking hot like I’m pretty sure the noise my brain made was just *ffffzzznnnntttt* and then smoke started pouring out my ears.
None of this would be possible without the central performance from Taron Egerton. It’s far and away the best work he’s ever done, a career-making performance, and on top of that, he’s singing everything. No lip syncing to Freddie’s Elton’s vocals and calling it good, he is performing every rousing high and every heartbreaking low, all while wearing the exact same over-the-top, suffocatingly Extra outfits that Elton originally performed in. And Elton’s quiet, sweet desperation for love is shining through every scene, even when he’s blacking out on cocaine and alcohol or performing for crowds of thousands on no sleep. I’m just so fucking proud of him, honestly, and so blown away by the commitment he made to every single moment of this film to make it feel as honest as it possibly could.
AND we got a classic Taron wink during “Honky Cat” so all is right with the world.
I’ve seen a lot of biopics in my life and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so achingly gutted by the pursuit of a career that promises worldwide love and adoration, all of it empty. The themes of the film may feel obvious and heavy-handed but Elton John is the world’s ultimate Drama Queen, in the best way possible - so in this case, it really really works. I think it’s gonna be a long long time (I’m sorry, I’m basically contractually obligated to make that joke) before we get another biopic that comes this close to an authentic emotional portrait of an artist’s life. Whether you know everything about the man or next to nothing, go see this film and let yourself be swept up in the magic.
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It’s a biopic about a musician, so yes, expect drugs. Lots of drugs. Obviously.
Plot: An epic musical fantasy about the uncensored human story of Sir Elton John’s breakthrough years.
How lucky Elton John must feel. He’s one of the only celebrities to have a biopic made in his lifetime, not posthumously. So there, that’s a comparison between Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody. Otherwise it is exactly the same. Alright, I’m kidding, Rocketman has its own distinct voice, literally, as its star actually sings the songs unlike a certain actor last year who played a famous rockstar and won an Oscar for it even though he mostly only lip-synced his way through that movie! Look, I have my share of problems with Bohemian Rhapsody, but we are here to talk about Rocketman! Directed by Dexter Fletcher who is known for Eddie the Eagle (also starring Taron Egerton) as well as for taking over directing duties from Brian Singer to finish off Bohemian Rhapsody last year...wait a minute. Another comparison? Jeez, Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody really do mesh together like bread and butter. Rocketman is the bread in this scenario as it is more....wholesome. Yes, not a great analogy (terrible in fact) but my point is that Rocketman is an overall better film of the two. It shares common ground with that movie visually with the colour palette as well as in narrative with the typical tropes and cliches of music biopics all included here. Heck, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story came out back in 2007 parodying Walk the Line, however that movie very much would still be as effective in it’s humour today thanks to films like Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody. So with that all being said, I do appreciate Rocketman at least trying to do something a bit different for the music biopic genre. That comes in form of what the director and cast have been saying in interviews about this film being in some ways like a fantasy.
Whilst not as fantastical as the film’s crew made it out to be in the marketing and interviews, there is a musical element within the movie with Elton John’s songs not simply being sung during live shows, but instead having certain scenes where Elton John and the people around him breaking out randomly into song (typical musical-like) with some visually cool notes like a scenes involving Elton John singing whilst underwater and seeing his younger self play the piano next to him. Basically, the fantasy element comes from what Elton John imagination sees. And though these moments are few and fleeting, they very much make this movie more engaging than anything of the likes of Bohemian Rhapsody. Sorry, that’s the last time I’ll negatively bring that movie into this conversation. And to be honest in general there is an element of the whimsical and flamboyance with John’s crazy outfits that constantly make the film’s imagery more engaging.
Also, one final comparison to Bohemian Rhapsody (sorry, really couldn’t help myself), unlike in that movie where Rami Malek mostly only lip-synced the Queen songs, in here Taron Egerton actually sings the Elton John classics himself, and does one hell of a job at it too, adding a bit of his own flavour into it with his slightly deeper voice yet still keeping the essence and flavour of the originals. In performance too Egerton is solid playing Elton John and if Rami Malek won the Oscar last year then Egerton at least has to be in conversation in the next awards season, only seems fair. That being said, I feel like Egerton could have given more gravitas to the more emotional and darker points of Elton’s life, as even though he does a passable job (serious teary eyes and all) I personally felt like he slightly missed the mark there. But as a whole he really does embody Elton John well. Jamie Bell plays Elton John’s lyricist and best friend Bernie Taupin, and you really got to appreciate Bell, as he has that loveable innocence to him that really works for the way the movie decides to portray Bernie. Richard Madden is on top sexual-predator form, who might have missed out on the sex during his time on Game of Thrones, but he’s all in here, folks! Bryce Dallas Howard also does acceptable work as Elton’s mother, however it was much more interesting seeing how the make-up department transformed her as the film jumps through Elton’s life.
Rocketman is by no means a new fresh flavour to the music biopic genre, but it does have its heart and due to good performances, songs and pace it’s very much an enjoyable film with certain ‘fantastical’ scenes that do end up sticking with you after the credits have rolled. It’s definitely better than that new Aladdin that’s also come out today. Probably. I don’t know, I haven’t seen it. Not planning on either.
Rocketman is a biopic following the life and career of Reginald Dwight, aka Elton John. It follows him from his beginnings as a pianist to one of the best selling male artists of all time, and focuses heavily on his mental state during the years he spent addicted to various substances.
I like Elton John, but he’s a musician that’s ahead of my time; I learned who he was through the Lion King and Quest for Camelot. So I was in a way the perfect audience for this film, since I wasn’t super well versed in his personal life.
This film was great; I don’t think I’ve ever seen this kind of biopic. It almost feels like a musical, something in the vein of Chicago, where all of John’s songs are used as a way to represent his mental state at various points in life. There is so much choreography, dancing, costumes and effects in this film that I think it absolutely captured the mood and vibe of each of his songs and I loved it.
Most biopics are historical; they either focus on the journey of a person’s life, leading up to an important event, or focus around said important event. This film does neither; the songs that are performed are out of order in some instances, and they are used as a way to capture John’s emotional state, his struggle with substance abuse and personal failures and demons. His music is already so raw and honest that we don’t need scenes where the characters spell out their lives to us; wisely Dexter Fletcher uses the Sondheim approach and has the songs speak the emotions for the actors, which was perfect.
The costuming, sets and choreography, were likewise amazing: I really liked the opening scene set to The Bitch is Back, though I think the standout by far was Crocodile Rock, which was what John’s first American performance, at the Troubadour was set to. They way Fletcher lingers on Elton doing his famous handstand on the piano, using bullet time to really capture the energy at the club was excellent.
I could gush about the cinematography and direction in this film all day; there were so many tricks and techniques Fletcher uses to capture a mood in a scene. He brings in bombast to the upbeat scenes, with lots of long takes, wide shots and pans; the intimate scenes are shot in close up/medium shots, and he just lets the actors speak. A perfect example is probably the scene most people will come away with from the film, which is Your Song. I also don’t always pay attention to the actor’s blocking, but I really appreciated it in this film too, especially in the scenes between Elton and his dad and Elton and Reed.
Speaking of the actors I thought they were all great in their parts. I had no idea how much Taron Egerton and Jamie Bell actually look like the real life young Elton and Bernie, until they show us the picture at the very end. They are absolutely perfect in their respective roles: Egerton walks a fine line between utter sincerity and camp, and he sells both the hard hitting moments and the frantic performer Elton was on stage. He’s not a great dancer, but he’s a good singer, and though he doesn’t sound like Elton John, he brings the right kind of energy to the songs.
Jamie Bell was likewise excellent as Bernie. I had no doubt that the friendship between these two men was monumental and real, and he and Egerton have a lot of chemistry together. I almost wish the film focused more on their relationship; my one pet peeve in the film was an early like from Elton where he claims Bernie and he have never had a fight, even though they blatantly and clearly have several just during the course of the film.
The rest of the cast was stellar too; I really enjoyed Bryce Dallas Howard as Elton’s mother, Gemma Jones as his grandmother and Steven MacKintosh as his emotionally distant father. There are so many messed up familial relationships in this film, but the scenes between Elton and his father were absolutely heartbreaking. It’s always difficult for me to discuss stuff like this, when it’s based on the lives of real people, but if this was how the relationship between Elton John and his father was really like, than he’s an even stronger person than I already thought he was.
Richard Madden was the only cast member I was struggling with; I absolutely believed in the chemistry between him and Egerton, he’s a good singer as well, but man did this movie paint him as a supervillain. Not only is he always in a black suit and almost comically in shadow, he also has the most over the top, evil lines of anyone. I wish he was allowed a little more subtlety, because like this, from the moment he appeared on screen, I knew he was going to end up being abusive and awful.
There were issues with some of the storytelling too. The film entirely glosses over Elton’s marriage to his only wife, Renata. I really hated this; she is a complete afterthought, she appears in 3 scenes, they get married in the second and divorced in the third. It was an awful way to treat that character, and for all the attention she gets, they might as well have cut her out of the film.
A bigger problem is the following; if you want this film to teach you about Elton John, I’m not sure how much it will do that. Like I said a lot of his songs and performances are out of order, and the film leaves out some rather important events of his life, including his work with Disney, his friendship with Freddie Mercury, his work in musical theatre and his friendship and eulogy for Princess Diana. I personally didn’t mind it as much, because I liked that the film had a singular focus, rather than trying to cover everything, but I can see how people who know more about Elton John or who know absolutely nothing, could be annoyed/misled by this.
Overall though, I loved this film. It’s the most creative biopic I have ever seen, it captures who Elton John is as a person and as a performer really well, it has a banging soundtrack and visual style and I think you should see it. It’s the most appropriate thing to watch this Pride, for sure.
ROCKETMAN is a musical that tells Elton John's life story through his songs. The film gives you more of an insight into John's mind and emotions rather than strictly following a historical narrative. Taron Egerton (Kingsman) plays Elton John and also sings every song in the film. Egerton does a great job in presenting John as complicated artist whose quest for love and acceptance leads him down a troubled path. The film follows John from childhood to his meteoric rise and covers his complicated relationships with his parents, longtime writing partner Bernie Taupin, management, sexuality, and substance abuse. ROCKETMAN has some very touching and raw moments but also has quite a bit of humor and fun. If you're an Elton John fan you'll love the film. Even if you're not familiar with John's music the film has a lot to offer.
