The biopic is the worst genre in cinema. Why do we continue to watch it?

Why are so many biopics bad? This is not a question of Hollywood, which churns out biopics by the bucketload and rightly treats them like catnip awards—since 2000, 11 Best Actor Oscars have gone to famous people playing other famous people. But this question bothers me and, apparently, Christopher Nolan too.

Start Director whose latest film Oppenheimer, about The Father of the Atom Bomb , released earlier this year, recently denied that the film was a biopic. A little strange, since the name of the topic is the same as the title. Also considering that when the film crossed the $910 million (£734 million) mark at the global box office, Oppenheimer technically exceeded Bohemian Rhapsody to become the highest-grossing biopic in history.

But I understand. I’m leery of anything that suggests this is a biopic, which is why I was so surprised that I liked it. ownerDirected, co-written and starring: Bradley Cooper as American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. The film, out this week, is beautifully crafted, with nuanced performances from Cooper and Carey Mulligan as Bernstein’s wife, and a pace that never lets up.

However, usually the word “biopic” makes me expect boredom. Many of them feel like lazy parades of lifetime greatest hits. Let’s take for example Nina, Vacanciesand oh god, the tumor Become Janeit so vastly underestimated the audience’s interest in Jane Austen’s actual writing. Time The magazine’s reviewer wrote, “Hathaway never lets us believe that a woman could write anything more complex than a diet book.”

Of course, each genre has its own clothing. But it feels like biopics have more than their fair share. “A biopic is something that applies to a movie that doesn’t really feel like it’s going to be dramatic,” Nolan told audiences at an event in New York in October. “You don’t talk about it Lawrence of Arabia like a biopic. You don’t talk about it Citizen Kane like a biopic. This is an adventure film. This is a film about a person’s life. It’s a useless genre, just like drama. It doesn’t give you anything to hold on to.”

I think it’s true. The moment a biopic relies solely and lazily on its characters—the moment it treats them as inherently and inevitably fascinating—it fails. The moment it seems like it’s a “traditional” biopic fails, which is why so many really good biopics end up getting D’s. Is Oppenheimer “Truly a biopic,” I instinctively thought when people described it that way. Is King’s Speech biopic? Are Walk the line, Angry bull, Good people, biographies? Technically, we are talking about a memorable person whose life is not so ordinary. But they feel like something more, and maybe that’s the whole point.

Biopics are everywhere this year. Ridley Scott is in UK cinemas this week only Napoleon with Joaquin Phoenix and Cooper owner. It was summer Oppenheimer. In December there will be Sofia Coppola. Priscilla. Napoleon is a historical epic with vivid production and unforgettable battle scenes. But like many biopics, it’s weakest when it contains too much, covers too many years, too many relationships and not enough depth. It’s a good movie, but by the end I wasn’t sure I had a better idea of ​​who Napoleon Bonaparte really was.

The worst ones are the ones that resemble a Wikipedia page. Music biographies have a lot to do with this, but they often mask their underlying approach with a great soundtrack. Take Bohemian Rhapsody (2018). Rami Malek may have won an Oscar for his portrayal of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, but the film itself is terribly safe and predictable, taking us from the band’s formation in 1970 to the epic Live Aid performance in 1985, which focused on Mercury’s personal life. and AIDS mortality in a linear, chronological order. What else will we learn about Mercury? A little.

If the rise (and fall) of a person is a fait accompli, where is the drama? The script itself seems to be aware of this and intervenes from time to time to nudge the viewer. “Freddie,” the manager says seriously at one point, just to spice things up a little, “you’re going to do such great things.”

Of course, as with any other genre of film, there are plenty of biopics that are bad for other reasons. But using Wikipedia is the worst sin. I can tolerate bad casting (Johnny Flynn as David Bowie in 2020). star dust); I can even handle bad prosthetics, which can be funny sometimes (hello, Armie Hammer in 2011). Jedgar and Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in 2017. dark hour). What I can’t stand at all, however, is the lazy and boring scriptwriting, which Nolan suggests makes the final product sluggish. The real problem with JedgarDirected by Clint Eastwood and starring Leonardo DiCaprio as FBI founder and director J. Edgar Hoover, this isn’t due to poor writing, but rather a failure to acknowledge that the subject matter isn’t actually that interesting. like the organization he founded.

Take it too Respect (2021) starring Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin. Hudson is great, and the film has received some flattering reviews, but I had a hard time seeing the film as simply a motivational quote, a story that uses numbers to draw a direct and reductive line between Franklin’s traumatic childhood and her courage. gospel album, even though everyone told her not to do it. “An oppressed woman succeeds against all odds” is the message of children’s films. When it comes to adults, it’s not (or shouldn’t be) enough without something a little more sophisticated to stand out. Laziness too often accompanies biographies.

Film historian Dennis Bingham, author Whose life are they? Biographical film as a modern film genre., argues that the biographical myth of birth and death is exaggerated. “If you try to make a lot of biopics depicting someone’s life from birth to death, you’ll probably fail.” , Citizen Kane), but even when movies don’t give us all the highlights, we often enjoy them. Napoleonfeel weaker when they feel obligated to play all the beats we already know about their subject.

Probably the best example of this is DianaThe terrifying 2013 film starring Naomi Watts as the Princess of Wales was a sweet treat for celebrities. Even though it was about the last years of her life, it was like a checklist of Dianoisms. Is charity misunderstood? Check mark. Paparazzi? Check mark.

Oh, but when biopics do well, it’s wonderful. Because some people’s lives are extraordinary enough to warrant a feature film, and when done right, it’s fascinating. As Nolan says, it’s often helpful to give a potential biopic something else to attach itself to – like a different genre. Spencer (2021), Pablo Larraín’s look at Diana’s defining moment at Sandringham, and Shirley (2020), a fictional take on horror writer Shirley Jackson, presents simultaneously brilliant, strange and dreamlike thesis, offering interpretations of historical lives and figures rather than precise descriptions of their actions or achievements.

And sometimes it’s about simple, rich stories that take the complexity of the subject quite seriously. Oppenheimer He succeeds because (besides the simplified portraits of women) he is deeply interested in the oddities of men and always feels attracted to them.

ownerMeanwhile, it begins and ends with the quote, “A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them,” and the film sticks to that perfectly, jumping around and showing us different elements of Bernstein’s character, his genius, his progressiveness. , his egoism and himself never settle anywhere.

It’s done slowly and patiently, the camera waiting for the whole person rather than just cherry-picking the best and the worst. “The world wants us to be united, and I think that’s unfortunate,” Kupers Bernstein says. These jumps are not an escape; That’s what the film is trying to say. If only more biopics could be this nuanced and this satisfying.

Best biographical films

Amadeus (1984)

A daring, irreverent tragicomedy about Mozart, who is in full swing with life.

Raging Bull (1980)

Martin Scorsese’s highly nihilistic take on boxer Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro).

Capote (2005)

Philip Seymour Hoffman bears a striking resemblance to literary star Truman Capote.

Worst biopics

Diana (2013)

Cardboard dialogue and a shoddy script make this one of the worst films of the decade.

Alexander (2004)

Oliver Stone’s epic starring Colin Farrell as the ancient king of Macedon is an overblown mess.

Jobs (2013)

Ashton Kutcher plays Apple founder Steve Jobs in this paint-by-numbers biopic that takes us dutifully from Jobs’ college days to the invention of the iPad.