Review: Rocketman

Growing up, I was never a fan of Elton John. As a child of the 80’s my first musical loves were Adam and the Ants and Musical Youth. Elton John felt incredibly old and out of date. I wasn’t particular interested in hearing him dueting with Kiki Dee, and I was too busy painting a white stripe across my nose and wearng an ‘I heart Kelvin’ t-shirt to worry about an old man in glasses and a sparkly suit.

Rocketman opens with a particularly sparkly suit. A bright orange jumpsuit with horns, wings and sequins, in fact. A triumphant, slow-mo sequence that gives you just enough time to notice that the hall he is striding through looks more like a manor house than backstage at a venue before Elton slams back into real time and into an alochol support group.

This first scene is a marvellous microcosm of the rest of the film. Elton is the only colour in the room. A vivid, fluorescent orange that means he is the only thing you notice in the room. At the same time, he is not nice. He is vicious and cutting, snarling at the room before admitting that he is there because he wants, needs, help for his various addictions.

Dexter Fletcher is an actor I’ve rather warmed to over the years. I’ve always rather liked him because he looked a bit like me growing up and I was a big fan of Press Gang as a kid. I’ve also always been intrigued by the fact that his look is rather polarising. There is a game you can play where you work out what you really look like to other people by taking the most attractive person you’ve ever been compared to and the least attractive and then placing yourself somewhere in the middle. It fascinates me that I can use Dexter Fletcher for both ends of my spectrum.

I’d never seen Mr Fletcher direct before though. It turns out he’s pretty good. Not subtle. Don’t watch this film expecting subtle. Expect nuance, and deeply drawn characters and heart wrenching emotion. Subtlety, though, is in short supply. There are two reasons for this. One, this is a film about Elton John. Elton is not subtle, and his memories of his own life are bound to polarized. The characters in the film are either angels or demons, firmly cast into their roles by Elton’s frame of recollection, and it is testament to both the directing and the acting that despite this, the characters feel real. Possibly because, while Elton acts as this films unreliable narrator, the characters themselves undercut their allocated roles with hints of motivations and realities that Elton is unable to grasp. Elton’s long term lover is a monster, motivated only by money and manipulating all of those around him, yet there are hints throughout that he genuinely cares about Elton. Bernie Taupin, Elton’s collaborator of fifty years, is stated onscreen as never having argued with Elton, not once. Yet, during the film, we see them argue and fall out. Dexter Fletcher has gone on record to say that, while not all of the events in the film are factually accurate, the emotion is. This is not a film about what happened in Elton John’s life. This is a film about how he felt about it.

The second reason this film is not subtle is that this film is, at heart, a musical. Elton’s music is beautifully interwoven into the plot to the point where you feel it was written to describe every moment you are seeing on screen. It takes a moment to remember that it was Bernie, not Elton, who wrote the lyrics to realize that they could not be describing Elton’s experiences, no matter how perfectly they seem to describe his state of mind.

I can’t finish this review without calling out Taron Egerton. Taron first shot to fame in Kingsman, playing a cheeky wideboy from the wrong side of the tracks who gets recruited into a elite secret service with more than a passing nod to James Bond. As the dashing lead of a hit film, he could have had his choice of starring roles for his next project to cement his pin-up status. Instead, he chose to play Eddie the Eagle, the everyman loser with bottle specs and a bad posture.

Similarly, in this film, Egerton throws himself into the character of Elton John as a ‘fat boy from Pinner’ with anger issues. It is not every actor who can make you connect with a character who’s defining trait is that he drives people away. That Egerton can sing as well is a revelation.

Go watch this film. It will be hard going. If Bohemian Rhapsody is an extended music video, Rocketman is a Ken Loach film with dance numbers. The payoff is worth it however. Stay to the end of the credits. If you don’t already know how Elton’s life ended up, you’ll be glad you did.