A few things leap out after watching the trailer for Stardust, the biopic about David Bowie’s US tour in 1971 wherein he created the Ziggy Stardust alter-ego and was launched to international stardom. Firstly, the title has already been used on the perfectly good 2007 Matthew Vaughn fantasy-adventure Stardust. Secondly, that lead actor Johnny Flynn, a promising British actor in Beast, Emma, and Lovesick and a solid musician in his own right, seems to be doing a poor impersonation of Noel Fielding instead of the Starman himself. And thirdly, owing to the fact Bowie’s estate did not approve of Stardust, the trailer does not (and the film will not) feature any of Bowie’s songs.
Now, the estate disapproving of Stardust is a bad look, yes, but on the other hand biopics are frequently hampered by representatives of the featured artist exerting too much control over their films. Bohemian Rhapsody was notably stalled for years due to surviving Queen members, Brian May and Roger Taylor, wanting their biopic to have more mass appeal, with the end result being incredibly sanitized. Stardust being an “unlicensed” biopic could allow for an unrestricted experimental deep-dive into the cultural idea of David Bowie itself. That the film is chronicling a specific moment in Bowie’s career, instead of trying to squeeze his entire life story into one film, might also allow Stardust to have more focus.
Unfortunately, judging by the trailer, Stardust does not seem to have taken this experimental approach. Instead the plot appears to follow Bowie coming off low sales and being deemed “too weird” for the Americans, alienating them with his countercultural lifestyle and irreverent humor. It is through a road-trip with his publicist Ron Oberman (Marc Maron) that Bowie will win them over. If that sounds familiar, it’s because this is what happens in every cliched musician biopic. They begin as misunderstood but full of promise, and through their originality they slowly win over the cynical record executives and unsuspecting public. We already know Bowie will become successful, but Stardust seems to rest upon the same tiresome trajectory. The facets that made Bowie unique – his mixture of jazz and glam-rock, his beguiling androgyny, his screeching empathetic lyrics – become washed away in the checklist approach, without even the jukebox appeal of hearing his music.
This by-the-numbers retelling is the issue with most musicians’ biopics. People watch them to comprehend cultural icons they already recognize, to “discover the man behind the legend” as Stardust’s trailer advertises. Yet these films rarely analyze what made these artists distinct. They play their greatest hits and run through the bullet points of their life story, but do not pick apart what made these musicians stand above the rest. More importantly they always present their works as ready-made hits, launching into them without showing the creative process behind it. Bohemian Rhapsody, for instance, has Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) sit at a piano and belt out a chorus from the song without insight as to where it came from or why it works. Showing the personal lives of these artists might demystify them, but it rarely explores them. Audiences watch them to try and understand what makes these musicians special, but usually end up just humming along to their greatest hits.
Often the music biopic formula is so rigid you could swap around the details of Walk the Line or Ray or Rocketman and have the same story of musicians crumbling under the pressures of fame and success. That might sound flippant, since of course these are real stories of addiction that happened to real people. But the consequence of such broad-strokes retelling is that these genuine struggles no longer feel authentic. The incredible parody film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story eviscerated the music biopic sub-genre by mocking all these recurring tropes, from being framed by a concert where “Dewey Cox needs to think about his entire life before he plays” to John C. Reilly portraying Dewey Cox from when he’s 14 years old. It showed how the sub-genre had become so repetitive that each individual step could be predicted and satirized.
There are exceptions, of course. Rocketman remains fairly generic but uses full-blown musical sequences that brings it closer to ‘fantasy’ than a real-life adaptation. Love & Mercy follows Brian Wilson (Paul Dano/John Cusack) of The Beach Boys across two time-periods; one creating Pet Sounds in the 1960s and one controlled by his psychologist Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti) in the 1980s. With such focused spurts Love & Mercy gets into Wilson’s headspace, showcasing him struggling to compose “Good Vibrations” as he attempts to get his thoughts down on paper. Similarly, Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There believed Bob Dylan was too ethereal and mythic to be conventionally depicted, and so featured 6 stories ‘inspired’ by Dylan performed by radically different actors; including Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere and others.Just as Robert Zimmerman recreated himself into Bob Dylan before he was refracted even further, Reginald Dwight became Elton John, Farrok Bulsara became Freddie Mercury, and David Robert Jones renamed himself David Bowie before becoming Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, and more. Stardust textually understands this continual reinvention, the trailer having Bowie proclaim “there is no authentic me,” but its cheesy appearance makes it seem unlikely it will truly embody Bowie’s eclectic personas. It remains possible Stardust might surprise everyone, but these initial looks seem to be telling a tale far too familiar in a style far too ordinary for a man who was out of this world.
Stardust is set to be released in theatres and on VOD on 25th November.
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