“Bound For Glory” (1976)
Normally when a biopic comes out, you’ll find someone who lived through the events depicted arguing that the circumstances depicted on screen never took place, or you’ll see a blog post listing all the historical inaccuracies. But “Bound For Glory,” Hal Ashby’s tremendous film about folk singer Woody Guthrie is proof, if proof were needed, that sticking to the facts isn’t the end of the story: this is a movie that feels utterly truthful, even though enormous amounts of it are fictionalized. Adapted extremely loosely by “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” writer Robert Getchell from Guthrie’s autobiography, Ashby’s film is as much travelogue as biography, following Guthrie (David Carradine, who replaced the originally cast Richard Dreyfuss) as he travels the rails in the American West in search of work, leaving his wife (Melinda Dillon) and family behind. It’s a fascinating shift for Ashby: absent much of the humor and lightness of touch of the director’s earlier films like “The Last Detail” and “Shampoo,” it’s a sedate, steady picture, one that feels like it must have influenced the likes of Kelly Reichardt today. But it’s anecdotal, episodic nature feels preferable to something more contrived (though it does mean that Ashby doesn’t engage with Guthrie’s politics in the way that you might expect), and there’s a lyricism and poetry to the film that’s extremely rare for a film about a musician like this. Much of this is down to cinematographer Haskell Wexler: he’d known Guthrie personally in the Merchant Marines, and had originally been set to direct the film. The photography (notable for being the first movie to use the recently-invented Steadicam) is among the finest that the late, great Wexler ever did, and as powerful an evocation on screen of the Great Depression as exists.
“Behind The Candelabra” (2013)
Supposedly Steven Soderbergh’s swan song (he’s gone on to shoot 20 hours of TV since, plus whatever his HBO movie “Mosaic” turns out to be), “Behind The Candelabra” saw Soderbergh go out on a high point with an immaculately acted, deceptively rich tale of flamboyant piano legend Liberace and his younger lover Scott Thorson. Airing on HBO in the U.S. but having premiered at Cannes and released theatrically in much of the rest of the world, theRichard LaGravenese-penned picture shows Liberace (a transformativeMichael Douglas) through the eyes of Scott (Matt Damon), an animal trainer seduced by the older man: thus begins a years-long relationship that sees the entertainer attempt to mold his boyfriend in his own image. For a film that plays with garish visuals and sometimes explicit sexuality, it’s surprisingly accessible, with Soderbergh toning down his formal experiments and evoking classic Hollywood melodrama, turning a deeply specific story into a fascinating, sometimes painfully raw, universal portrait of what amounts to a marriage. But it’s also an examination of iconography, of celebrity, of masculinity, of fathers and sons, and of excess and greed. Again, having a very specific point of view helps the film: we get a complete picture of Liberace (or Lee, as he is known to his friends), but only through the eyes of Scott, rather than a film professing to tell his whole life story. Soderbergh waited a number of years until Douglas and Damon were available, and you can see why: the former is simply staggering in a role completely opposite from his usual type, while Damon does his usual subtle, generous work in one of his finest turns.
“Amadeus” (1984)
Milos Forman can be seen as a biopic expert: his later films like “The People Vs. Larry Flynt” and “Man On The Moon” both expertly pulled off portraits of “difficult” men. But his finest moment in the genre is undoubtedly “Amadeus,” the Best Picture-winner that took what could have been fusty, dusty subject matter —the life of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart— and turns it into something thrilling and entirely vibrant. Based on Peter Shaffer’s acclaimed play, the film tells Mozart’s life through the eyes of Salieri, a rival composer to Mozart, painted here as a mediocre talent who, unable to reconcile Mozart’s seemingly God-given music with his crude, boorish behavior, attempts to undermine, destroy and ultimately murder him. The result (which takes hefty creative license with the facts, as Shaffer has freely admitted) uses the story of Mozart and Salieri as a jumping off point to examine the nature of genius, jealousy and fairness, and it’s hard to imagine a better adaptation than Forman’s film, which never feels stagy and brings operatic themes to the screen without losing the nuances. Some of the greatest actors working at the time played the key roles —Paul Scofield had originated Salieri at the National Theatre in London, Ian McKellen won a Tony on Broadway— but then little-known actors F. Murray Abraham andTom Hulce were unexpectedly cast by Forman, and they nail it: Abraham’s an endlessly watchable Machiavellian Salieri, and Hulce seemingly channels the Sex Pistols as the over-the-top, giggly, foolish yet somehow charming Mozart. Both were Oscar-nominated, though only Abraham picked up the prize, one of eight Oscars the movie deservedly won.
“Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” (2007)
Sure, some might sneer at our inclusion of “Walk Hard” on this list, given that it’s a biopic of a fictionalized musician, and is in fact a parody of the music biopic genre. But to exclude it would be madness: it’s a film that emulates and borrows the biopic structure so expertly that not only does it do it better than most serious attempts, but it also essentially ruined it for any subsequent efforts (taking a film like “I Saw The Light” is much trickier after you’ve seen this). Produced by Judd Apatow, directed by Jake Kasdan and co-written by the pair, it stars John C. Reilly as Johnny Cash-ish country musician Dewey Cox, who famously has to think about his entire life right before he plays a gig. We join him on one of these recollections, from accidentally bisecting his brother in Alabama as a kid to worldwide superstardom, taking in novelty records, punk, psychedelia, disco, hip-hop, multiple marriages and children, and addiction to pretty much every kind of drug you could think of. It’s a scrappy, scattershot film to some degree, with a tone closer to the likes ofZucker, Abrahams & Zucker‘s “Airplane!” and the ‘Naked Gun‘ series than to “Anchorman” (the film felt out of step with the times as a result). But it’s so perfectly executed as pastiche —from a faux awards-worthy performance from Reilly, to the “Walk The Line”-evoking production values, to the excellent music, and so weirdly loving of both the form and of its central character— that it both perfects and utterly destroyed the genre. There’s no higher praise but to say that if Mel Brooks had still been making movies when “Walk The Line” came out, this is the movie he’d have made.
“Get On Up” (2014)
Full disclosure: “Get On Up” seemed to hew so closely to the “Ray”/“Walk The Line” formula that we skipped it in theaters. By the time we caught up to it recently, our worst fears were seemingly confirmed with the opening, which seems to be setting up a flashback structure that suggests that no one involved with the movie saw “Walk Hard.” And yet once it gets going, we were pleasantly surprised: somehow, the director of “The Help” had made a thrilling, vibrant and surprising biopic that avoids the trappings of much of the genre. Jez and John-Henry Butterworth’s screenplay and Taylor andMichael McCusker’s editing thrillingly leaps through time in a non-linear but far from random fashion, telling James Brown’s story in snippets and in a way that prioritizes the moments rather than the sweep of a life, often contrasting the dizzying highs almost immediately with the crashing lows. It’s not subtle, but neither was Brown, and Taylor effectively captures the energy of his music, and crucially doesn’t fall into the trap so many filmmakers do and decide that a biopic is meant to explain its subject. A hefty ensemble all impress, particularly Viola Davis as Brown’s mother, and “True Blood” actor Nelsan Ellis as Bobby Byrd, but it’s future Black Panther Chadwick Boseman who owns the film as Brown. He’s not quite as charismatic as the real JB, but who was? You still can’t take your eyes off him throughout.
Honorable Mentions: Even though we’ve covered the ten best, there are still some good ones otherwise. Sissy Spacek is tremendous as Loretta Lynn in Michael Apted’s “The Coal Miner’s Daughter,” while Todd Haynes also did tremendous work with “Superstar,” his unofficial, swiftly-banned Karen Carpenter biopic with Barbie dolls. If we were happy with a certain amount of fictionalization, we could have also include his “Velvet Goldmine,” as well as Eminem movie “8 Mile” and Gus Van Sant’s “Last Days,” among others.
We figured “Love & Mercy” and “Straight Outta Compton” were just a little too recent to make this list, but might have done a few years down the line. And there’s also “La Bamba,” “Shine,” “Great Balls Of Fire,” “The Buddy Holly Story,” “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” “Backbeat” and “Lisztomania,” to name but a few. Any others that you’d defend? Let us know in the comments.
