How Modern Biopics’ Frustrating Trends Impact the Autumn Movie Season – Hot

Movies like The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game, Darkest Hour, and even last year’s smash hit Bohemian Rhapsody all have one thing in common. Other than debuting at some point this decade, they all follow the same outline. Namely, following the main accolades of an important historical figure in a very straightforward, mind-numbingly obvious fashion.

These movies and others like them are praised at the time of their release for a great impression by a great actor, and maybe they even sniff a few awards come Oscar season. But as time passes, you’ll start to realise that the only thing you’ll remember about The Imitation Game is Benedict Cumberbatch, rather than the actual merits of the film itself.

It all starts with how these films function, and how they all follow the same blueprint to varying degrees of success. One of the best examples being Gus Van Sant’s Milk, starring the great Sean Penn in one of his last great roles.

Penn is positively sublime as Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man in California to become an elected official. He captures the head-in-the-clouds happiness of Milk with such grace and charisma. He’s widely charming, and Van Sant wisely give him ample opportunity to appear larger than life and play with the other members of the talented cast. I also appreciate how Van Sant, along with help from his cinematographer Harris Savides, captures the yellow-tinted haze of San Francisco, which is often associated with the Golden City and the time period in which the movie takes place.

There’s obviously a lot to love about Milk, and it’s a film that I would largely recommend in the end. But like so many other modern biopics, I would never consider it a capital-G, “Great” film. It’s a movie that is constructed around that great Penn performance without much else of note.

Milk is about as standard of a script as you’ll find in a Hollywood picture, using a very hacky framing device of Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk reciting his story into a recording device to be heard after his death, giving the story every excuse to decade hop from important moment to important moment in Harvey Milk’s life while Penn occasionally comes back via voice over to stitch the film together.

The device is an obvious trope in many of these biopics, and they come about from the odd desire of these films to deliver a Sparknotes-style summation of that person’s story. Instead of a deep character study, we get a cramming of events into a two-hour film. Sadly, the side characters in Milk come and go as they please, fulfilling their duties in a way that can be distilled down to one personality trait or function.

While these biopics are always about vital topics – Milk tackling the gay rights movement in the middle of the 20th century – their frustrating constructions rarely get beneath the surface since the messages at the core of these movies rarely have the specificity to make a lasting impact. They have the impossible task of spanning years (and even decades) while also trying to offer an intense character study of a person. In general, it’s just so hard to make a succinct film with so many moving parts.

You’ll notice that many of the best biopics – Raging Bull, The Social Network, Malcolm X, just to name a few – have well over two-hour runtimes. They’re allowed the grand, epic scale that mirrors the monumental stories of their subjects. Then again, those films mentioned and others are made by some of our best filmmakers – individuals that are given a longer leash to tell their stories and also know exactly how to juggle their vast array of resources – so a simple declaration of “all biopics needs to be at least two hours” isn’t exactly a cure-all. Especially since the idea of a less than stellar filmmaker having carte blanche to tell a bloated, bland biopic is what keeps me up at night when the existential dread isn’t kicking in.

But, when looking at these particular successes, you’ll see a strong attention to detail in all facets, films that manage to thread the needle between scope and intensely personal scenes, that understand the essence of these historical figures without slavishly retelling events. It’s this balance that allows the societal and geopolitical assertions made in the films to have extreme relevance and influence. Not to mention they’re just more fun to watch.

There’s also the problem of weaving a complex, multifaceted yarn out of a person that many casual moviegoers have a strong connection to. It’s akin to doing justice to a famous comic book character except, well, it’s real life. We all have our perceptions of these individuals based on our personal relationship to their public personas. I can’t fathom how impossible it is to distill all those feelings and memories and mold them into a story that manages to meet most expectations. If a filmmaker wishes to take artistic license with the story or cast a less than loving picture of them, he or she is often met with intense scrutiny. It’s in those situations where I think to myself, “Damn, filmmaking is hard.”

That doesn’t even include the possibility of the historical figure or their estate getting involved in his or her own project and altering the film’s perception view of them meet their own liking. Look no further than Bohemian Rhapsody, where the living members of Queen essentially shunned Sacha Baron Cohen from the project because he wanted to paint a very, very R-rated picture of their career together. We know how the final product ended up, and it’s certainly not that. We all have a reverence for these figures in one way or another, making an honest portrayal, one that would tell their story, warts and all, even more difficult.

I fear that the fall’s slate of biopics may fall into these same, tired trends. Kicking it off is Judy, the story of a late-in-her-career Judy Garland as played by Renée Zellweger, who seems to be having the time of her life campaigning for what feels like an inevitable Best Actress nomination considering that she’s playing an industry titan (as we know The Academy loves a good story about itself, look at La La Land) and the role can be viewed as a bit of a career-comeback.

The narrative for an awards campaign practically writes itself. And as expected, the early buzz is mostly going to her performance, and less about the movie as a whole. This feels like a classic example of the standard critical biopic soundbite: “Great performance, okay movie.”

Netflix’s Dolemite is My Name seems to have a similar air around it. Eddie Murphy is mounting a comeback with this movie, a Netflix stand-up special, and a return to host SNL. We’re about to see a lot of Eddie Murphy as he is paraded around to every talk show to promote the film. And as for its critical reception thus far, it seems to fall right in line with Judy.

Coming early in November is Harriet, the Harriet Tubman biopic starring the incredibly talented Cynthia Erivo. After a few promising performances early in her career, this feels very much like a stepping-stone role, the prestige, awards-focused performance that would (hopefully) forever change her status as a performer and vault her up with the A-listers. The problem is that the movie has a scene in which she chooses her name that rivals Han’s naming scene in Solo in terms of sheer bluntness. I’m working on the proper facepalm technique for when I see that scene in all its glory.

That scene might even be a microcosm of the entire film, with many critics already lamenting Harriet’s tired, standard structure. Pour one out for Cynthia Erivo’s Oscar chances, I suppose.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is the last of the big-time, buzzy biopics of the season, with Tom Hanks sporting a red sweater and taking a stab at playing the venerable Fred Rogers. I must say, that about as perfect casting as you can get in biopic. But a few things have me nervous for the film, the first being the apparent framing device of a reporter played by Matthew Rhys, who profiles Fred Rogers as part of a story on heroes. This literally screams Screenwriting 101.

Secondly, coming off the monumental success of last year’s Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, which is essentially the only thing you will ever need to watch to understand Mr. Rogers, I wonder how this feature can add anything new, or deepen the already monumentally strong emotions felt in that documentary. I fear an abnormally short shelf life for this well-intentioned film.

I sincerely hope that I am wrong in my estimations, and that all these films manage to transcend their apparent tropes. Maybe then these films will endure and be heralded as crucial and revolutionary, just like the work of the great people that inspired them.