Among all the absurd decisions a director can make to definitively sink their career, none is as consequential as turning the protagonist into, pay attention, a monkey. Yes, Robbie Williams is a monkey in Better Man. That is, the monkey is not Robbie Williams' pet, no, the monkey is him. It could have been a Belgian shepherd dog, a lemur, a Tasmanian devil, a Komodo dragon, a giant (or regular) squid, or a bologna sandwich, but Michael Gracey weighed the pros and cons and, unable to find a single reason to support such an erratic choice, he was clear that only a primate would allow him to become the most outstanding guy in the history of cinema. And so it was done.
Basically, the director of the very 'kitsch' and very hypnotic 'The Greatest Showman' repeats his strategy. Back then, it was about turning the life of circus entrepreneur Phineas Taylor Barnum into a monumental and very self-aware contraption displayed on three tracks. It started by telling the industries and adventures of a man who dances and sings to end up in a spectacular visual display capable of flying freely and uncontrollably while adapting the tropes and clichés of classic musical cinema to a new, let's say, millennial sensibility. I'm not sure if there were monkeys, but it's as if there were. Now, the plan is to turn the classic mythology of the rise, fall, and redemption of a pop star into the perfect excuse to break the rules that it sets out to follow. Brilliant.
And then there's the monkey. Every biopic, more or less interesting, more or less thorough, more or less orthodox, demands at least an emotional involvement with its protagonist. We must either like or dislike them, but they cannot (or should not) leave us indifferent. But how can we engage with a digitally generated animal that seems to have escaped from the latest sequels of Planet of the Apes? Once again, Gracey weighed the advantages and disadvantages and, after much deliberation and finding nothing but another appeal to courage (or to masculinity in its most simian sense), he was clear: the monkey. Thus, we see the chimpanzee protagonist being bullied as a child, joining the group Take That as a teenager, succeeding, falling into drug abuse, showcasing immense talent, ruining his life, embarking on a brilliant solo career, sinking back into misery, losing control, sabotaging himself at every turn, publicly committing suicide, and then coming back to life... Until at a certain point, the director gets his way and indeed, we stop seeing the monkey to see the simian nature of everything, of the pop universe, of life, of ourselves.
What is then seen is not Robbie Williams or even a character embodying all his virtues and flaws. What is seen is simply the naked myth, a narrative stripped of artifice to be nothing more than simple and pure artifice. The director injects enough energy into each sequence so that it matters little that the story barely matters and even less that what we have in front of us is nothing more than, as already mentioned, a monkey. Absurd is an understatement. The word is ugly (even uglier is the creature) but how can one resist. Gracey and the macaque have the guts. Just like that.
Director: Michael Gracey. Cast: Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Damon Herriman, Alison Steadman, Anthony Hayes. Duration: 131 minutes. Nationality: Australia.