(Most of the clothes Egerton is shown wearing are replicas of costumes Elton John actually wore, a feat of costume design by Julian Day that is ostentatious and humble at the same time.) We cycle through early striving and midcareer misery.
We start in rehab, where Elton has arrived in full stage regalia, a bright orange jumpsuit adorned with angel wings and devil horns.
The main plot of “Rocketman” follows a familiar therapeutic loop. The trouble, for Elton, is what follows from that success, as his fame exacerbates the unhealed wounds of childhood. Bernie produces lyrics by the bushel, Elton has tunes by the bucketful, and the resulting hits make both men insanely rich before either turns 30. It’s hard to think of a portrayal of artists at work less invested in the myth of creative struggle. Those are heard when they suit the mood, rather than the historical record. Or, a bit later, when he takes the stage at the Troubadour in Los Angeles and levitates the crowd with “Crocodile Rock.” Other songs - “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” and the title track, among others - function more as musical numbers, giving theatrical vividness and metaphorical voice to Elton’s emotions. Sometimes the songs are embedded in the plot, as when Elton, early in his partnership with Taupin (Jamie Bell), unfurls “Your Song,” apparently off the top of his head, on the piano in his mother’s parlor. Young Reg dances his way to adulthood to the sounds of “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting.”Īs a result, the chronology is almost as baroque as the melodies. Grown-up Elton sings duets with his younger self. It’s also lucky that Fletcher and Hall, rather than making a standard biopic, infuse this one with anti-literalist elements of jukebox-musical spectacle. Luckily, there is also a grandmother around - the wonderful Gemma Jones - to notice the lad’s talents and to make sure he cultivates them, with lessons at the Royal Academy of Music. After they split up, there’s a harmless, useless stepfather (Tom Bennett).
Mum (Bryce Dallas Howard) runs hot and cold, her warmth always contingent on her own needs. Dad (Steven Mackintosh) withholds all affection and approval from his firstborn son, in spite of a shared interest in music. (He’s played as a boy by Matthew Illesley and in adolescence by Kit Connor the adult Elton is Taron Egerton).
(The instrumental score, threaded with echoes and allusions to his hits, with special attention to “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” is by Matthew Margeson.)Īs “Rocketman” tells it, that affection - mine and everyone else’s - stands in painful contrast to the absence of love in Reg Dwight’s childhood. John, now 72, married and many years sober, serves as an executive producer and the author (with his lyricist Bernie Taupin, of course) of most of the soundtrack.
But like that booklet, the movie - a testament to self-realization and a chronicle of recovery - is very much an authorized life. Back in the ’70s, the fact that John was gay counted as an official secret, as did the extent of his devotion to alcohol, cocaine and other substances. “Rocketman,” directed by Dexter Fletcher from a screenplay by Lee Hall, recounts a slightly updated, substantially more candid version of the same story. I spent many hours that summer on the beanbag chair in the green-carpeted den, listening to “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” and poring over the tale of how a shy, bespectacled piano prodigy named Reginald Dwight blossomed into the internationally renowned song stylist dominating my turntable and millions of others. Nestled inside the sleeve was a graphic-novel-style booklet about the singer’s life, a source of great fascination to me at the time. The first album I ever bought with my own allowance was “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy,” one of two studio LPs Elton John released in 1975.