Rated: MA15+
Directed by: Dexter Fletcher
Written by: Lee Hall
Produced by: Matthew Vaughn, David Furnish, Adam Bohling, David Reid
Executive Produced by: Elton John, Steve Hamilton Shaw, Michael Gracey, Claudia Vaughn, Brian Oliver
Starring: Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden, Gemma Jones and Bryce Dallas Howard.
‘You’ve got to kill the person you were born to be and become the person you want to be.’
Rocketman is the biopic of the ‘magnificent’ Elton John.
The film introduces the man, the musician, the stage performer in dramatic fashion: a red daemon with glittery horns and red feathered wings. We see the ending to the chaos of his success.
‘I am Elton Hercules John’, he states to Group in rehab with the admission of addiction: the drugs, the sex and of course the shopping.
We’ve all heard of Elton John – I’m certainly aware of his fame and the costumes he’s worn during his performances. But what this film shows is who Elton used to be: Reginald Dwight, the piano prodigy.
At five-years of age Regi was able to hear and play anything on the piano.
And he goes on to succeed as a pianist, in the classics, eventually finding himself backing a blues and soul group, Bluesology. He asks the lead singer of the group – how can an overweight white man become famous?
By performing his own songs.
Reginald has the music but not the words.
When the lyrics of Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) are thrown in his hands while auditioning for an agent, it’s fate.
And the performance Regi makes at the Troubador, where Neil Young plays to sell-out crowds, is something like magic.
The trick of this film is how that magic is conveyed through the screen to get that feeling where the moment has arrived. The Life Defining Moment.
I could feel the pressure before Regi’s performance.
But instead of freezing, he becomes something else. He becomes Elton John.
He Becomes, taking everyone up with him.
I saw Taron Egerton in Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) and remember Elton made a cameo appearance in this, I’ve got to say, disaster of a film.
But worth it if it brought these two artists together.
Taron is, yep, magnificent in his role as the tortured, messy and heart-broken genius. I can’t think of anyone else better suited to play the part. Taron also performed all the songs.
Which leads me to highlight, Rocketman has moments of being a musical. Well, is a musical; a genre I find hard to stomach. It’s just cheesy when someone sings what should be spoken, really knocking me out of the fantasy of reality on screen.
I was worried when I saw the 50s styled dances, twirling with their washed-out petticoats circling the colourful five-year-old Reginald. But as Taron played those Elton John songs, it was more like a concert with surreal illumination, reflecting the state of mind of the man performing, night after night. His success explosive.
There’s a story to be told about this shy extravert (a contradiction but a point made about the man and his complex layers); there’s heartbreak and being alone, up above, on the cloud of his success – above the clouds because he’s so high.
And there’s redemption, growth and his nana (Gemma Jones): ‘Crumbs, that was energetic.’ She says, bless her white cotton socks.
Makes that meteor, right up there in the stratosphere somehow relatable.
Despite its musical elements, I found Rocketman completely absorbing.