Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Elton John has never been a an artist I ever reach for, for reasons I don’t think I’d examined until the release of this film. I think it’s because at the time my musical tastes were developing and, let’s be honest, ossifying, Elton was bashing out saccharine drivel like Candle in the Wind and Circle of Life, which I’d be pleased to never hear again, thank you so very much. Perhaps somewhere in my mind was a vague appreciation of some of his earlier work, but in general, the amount of brain cycles I devote to Elton John in a typical year is zero. Therefore, not all that fussed about a film that chronicles his rise to stardom and subsequent collapse into a pile of drugs.
Yet, that’s what I watched in Rocketman, with Taron Egerton wearing the comical shades of the showman in later years, although we’re also looking at his early life – the discovery of his talent for the piano and a family life that’s at best cold, particularly from his idiothole of a father. We jump around in time through the framing device of an addict’s support group, where he relates his life story in typically fabulous regalia, through his songwriting pairing with Jamie Bell’s Bernie Taupin and romantic pairing with Richard Madden’s John Reid, the huge success that came with breaking into the American market, and how he turned to drugs and casual sex to deal with the pressure of all of this. That, at least, is it in a nutshell, if you want more detail there’s plenty of wikipedia articles on Elton’s life.
It is not, by any measure, a complete history of his life, nor an entirely accurate one. The usual cinematic shortcuts have been made, but I read an article by John in the Guardian where he says this has the emotional truth of it, at least, and I’m inclined to believe it. It’s not sugar coating or minimising any of his less than exemplary behaviour, or how he was treating other people and himself at his lowest. So, not unvarnished, exactly, but a light coating at worst.
It does have a good amount of charm, and Egerton is very good in the lead role. It weaves the best of John’s early career songs into the narrative in as organic a way as you’re going to get for this sort of thing, and I found it to be a surprising amount of fun. In that regard it’s a lot like Bohemian Rhapsody, except without having to ignore the whole sexual assault of a minor thing. And indeed in Dexter Fletcher, the films shares an unofficial director after Singer went to ground at the tail end of filming. The boy from Press Gang done good.