Movies about singers are often made from the same mold. Rise, fall and subsequent redemption of the star. The character’s shadows are blurred so as not to show him in a negative way. The drugs appear as flirtations, or almost offscreen; There is no need to show the wild side of the music world. The family audience is too precious. The paradigmatic example of this Hollywood mold was Bohemian Rhapsodythe biopic about Freddie Mercury that accumulated in its footage all the evils of this film subgenre. Despite everything, or perhaps because of all this, it was a huge success that, even with bad reviews, even made it to the Oscars (where Rami Malek won Best Actor).
A biopic about Robbie Williams he couldn’t be so candid. The singer and former member of Take That has always been known for being the bad boy. The boyfriend that no mother wanted for her daughters, but the most desired of all the boy band British. He was, by far, the one with the most charisma, and he is the one who has had the most successful career after leaving the band. What no one expected is that the film about the singer Angels either Rock DJ would star… a digital monkey.
How they listen to it. Better Manwhich hits theaters this Wednesday, replaces the singer with an ape made with visual effects that maintains the singer’s (real) gaze. Thus, the monkey gives him the life of a boy – when he imitates and idolizes his absent father -; as a young man – when he achieves fame with Take That – and as an adult, when he becomes a complete idiot and a prisoner of fame and drugs. It’s a biopic, but musical and with the artist’s songs as a soundtrack. It is directed, in fact, by a specialist in the genre such as Michael Gracey, author of The great showman, and has spectacular numbers like Rock DJ which takes the recreated Take That from the film throughout London’s Regent Street.
We see Robbie (monkey) in the movie doing a lot of cocaine. And even heroin. He is not condescending to himself, and the real Robbie Williams believes that this way of presenting himself to his audience is what makes people feel a special bond with him, and that others biopics are affected because “the artists or their heirs are terrified and want to protect their intellectual property.” “I, however, am on the autism spectrum and don’t realize what I should or shouldn’t tell you about myself, and I think people identify with that authenticity because they know they’re not being lied to. “I can only be myself, and this is me,” he explains and alludes to the revelation he made to the BBC in 2018 about his psychological disorder.
The singer believes that the decision to replace him with a monkey – which his director explains as the simplest of metaphors, Robbie Williams was like a wild animal – has also been a relief. “Thank God we put a monkey in it, because everyone’s talking about it, and I don’t know if we’d be talking about my movie if we hadn’t put a monkey in it. I think that is the exact reason why it was done, because we needed people to talk about it and we have achieved that,” he says.
He assures that there were no red lines, and he jokes about it, “the massive fraud I committed with international banking is not mentioned, but maybe in another movie,” he says laughing. This absence of red lines is also noticeable in the representation of his relationship with Take That. In the film it is recognized that he ended up asking for forgiveness from Gary Barlow, the other leader of the group and with whom he had the most tense relationship. Just don’t expect Barlow to see the film. “He hasn’t seen her yet and I don’t think he ever will. Maybe one day from behind the couch covering his face. I showed him the script and he told me that it came out worse than Darth Vader in the first Star Wars. I don’t know, I think Darth Vader is a well-made character,” he says again with irony.
In biopics, the artists or their heirs are terrified and want to protect their intellectual property
Robbie Williams
— Musician
In Better Man He is shown as a child obsessed with proving that he is someone to get out of the neighborhood. Being someone will make you obsessed with being famous, the way for everyone to see that you have achieved what you set out to do. For Robbie Williams, “we have always been in one way or another obsessed with fame.” “We are obsessed with success in whatever form it comes. Also, now we also have a representation of a better life on social media, and that’s corrosive and toxic in a way, but I also think that it makes people strive to make their lives the best version of what they can. become. And that, in many other ways, I don’t think is bad. Being obsessed with improving is laudable,” he reflects.
So what is success for Robbie Williams? “Well, the most important thing for me is to achieve that higher version of myself, the one that really wants to be a good boy. Be a good father. Be a good husband. But deep down, what I really want, because of my impulses, because I’m an animal, is to sabotage everything, including my career or my marriage. And I have to protect myself from those impulses and try to live up to them. For me, achieving it is success,” he values.
The film shows, of course, how difficult the sudden arrival of fame is for a young person, with all the attention it entails and feeling like they are the center of the world. “It was impossible to live with fame and not react to it in a worrying way. It’s a time when you don’t know who you are, and it’s very difficult to enter this life that seems The Truman Showwhere also many external forces try to tell you who you are and what you are. They try to show you your weaknesses and point out that you are problematic and a horrible person. “That can have a detrimental effect on your well-being,” he says. He does it with a surprising calmness, which breaks all the prejudices that one may have towards him. As if that wild monkey had become a domestic animal that enjoys being petted instead of biting everyone.
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