Rock and roll biopics are not easy to pull off, for obvious reasons. It's beyond difficult for actors to replicate musical talent. In general, though, they fare better than sports biopics because it's even harder to replicate both athletic talent and size. Johnny Cash, Elvis, Jim Morrison, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Brian Wilson, to an extent, have all been done fairly successfully on the big screen.
A most memorable music biopic experience for me was the 1986 showing of Sid and Nancy, at a time when my wife and I were blissfully unaware of the burgeoning punk movement, which was manifested at the generally serene 19th Street Theater in Allentown by dozens of punk aficionados yelling and rolling bottles down the aisle throughout the movie. Thank God it wasn't Schindler's List.
I realized, by the way, that the role of Sid Vicious was played by Gary Oldman, who not long ago won an Academy Award for playing Winston Churchill. Both Sid Vicious and Winston drank a little, but Sid was dead at 22 while Churchill stuck around until 90, and he had that whole "Prime Minister World War" thing going on, too.
The two most recent musical biopics took on big subjects: Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown and Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere. Of the two stars, I'm a much bigger fan of Bruuuce. The last time I saw him live, he was so brain fried from a tour and the three and a half hour expenditure of energy that he gave on stage, that he thanked our wonderful crowd in Cleveland, except we were in Detroit. As for Dylan, I respect him more than like him. His song writing, to state the obvious, places him on the rock and roll pantheon, but his sullenness, lack of connection to the audience, and, okay, his voice, which I know some believe to be the essence of muttering brilliance but I can't endure for long stretches, sours me a little.
But the movie came alive for reasons well beyond Timothee Chalamet's capturing of Dylan's sullen genius. The supporting cast made the movie; Edward Norton as the ever-optimistic Pete Seeger, and especially Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez. There's a moment when they're on stage together and Baez challenges him by throwing back her hair — a move every bit as aggressive as a football player buckling his helmet — utters an invective, and launches into 'It Ain't Me, Babe.' Off stage, Dylan's girlfriend, played by Elle Fanning, watches their on-stage chemistry, and, just with her eyes, acts out a universe of emotions: regret, sorrow, realization. The film worked largely because of the lift that they got from those supporting players.
By contrast, there's nobody like that to help Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen. And to be fair, Deliver Me From Nowhere comes from specific source material; a book about Springsteen's obsessive drive to make Nebraska, a dark and introspective album that no one wanted him to make. But he gets little help from his love interest — a clear, composite character — and even worse, there is almost nothing from the E Street Band. When my wife and I saw the film at ArtsQuest, the theater came alive mostly when he and his band cranked out 'Born In the USA' in the studio. Surely, there was some way to keep true to the source material and find some space for the E Street Energy. Despite a great performance from White, the most energetic man in rock and roll turned into, well, a version of Dylan.
Anyway, credit to both movies for tackling these projects because one can't imagine any bigger subjects in the musical world, with the possible exception of Paul McCartney. I'm amazed, well, maybe I'm amazed, that Sir Paul hasn't been tackled yet, and when it happens, I hope they don't concentrate on the "Paul is dead" aspect of his career. They half-killed Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.
