The specific sub genre of music biopics has been in a state of a downward trend as of recent, starting with the heavily divisive Bohemian Rhapsody. There’s a certain staleness and by the books coverage of these living legends that many have seemed to notice from recent music biopics. Now we travel back to the question of whether the genre has still reached the peak of its fatigue with Michael, the biopic putting to the screen the life of the iconic King of Pop, Michael Jackson. Directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring the nephew of Michael, Jaafar Jackson, The film chronicles the life of Michael all the way back from 1966 with his wee days as a child growing up in Gary, Indiana, all the way up to the early 80s when he began to breakout as a solo artist. Despite the towering achievements of his life the film covers in this span of 20 years in his life, its aware of the adversity he faced along the way like trying to escape his abusive father, Joseph Jackson, who out of greed wanted him to stay a Jackson 5 member all his life in order to suck up the revenue. Beyond his family life even , the film also covers the multitude of inner struggles of fame Michael faced like the Pepsi incident, seeking approval through nose jobs, and his condition of vitiligo that sparked a number of misconceptions about him within the media.
The film is aware of Michael’s struggle and the multitude of things he went through in his life, but to what extent exactly? The thing about fame and the limelight, especially being the caliber of famous Michael Jackson was, is that the life is a great double edged sword. It’s filled with triumphs of joy and privilege for Michael like sharing his passion for art with millions of fans that back up what he does every time. It brings the opportunity to max out your potential of artistry, given the amount of freedom to create some gave Michael because of the boundaries he was able to push for the art of showstopping. But fame for Michael, also comes with a second side of the coin. Media scrutiny and scathing journalists looking to knaw at his face with cameras and hardly allowing a private moment beyond the exhaustion from putting on a moonwalk and smile each and every day for people who don’t consider his mental health. While Michael gets to control his own destiny as an artist in the light of so much love from people, he barely gets to control his destiny as a man in the light of fame, where people are already set on trying to further enforce his persona of a dancing icon onto the world before giving him a rest to be a normal human being not constantly met with the pressure to match that bar he set for superstardom time and time again.
With that being said, it’s safe to say fame had it’s handful of troubles for Michael despite the honor it was to be hailed to a standard of that level of greatness. But according to the narrative from writer John Logan built in, fame troubles were a jiffy for Michael. Every hardship he went through, Michael trudges through easily with a jolly smile. Obviously there’s the truth that Michael was a man who tried his hardest to be happy each and every day. He was a kind person to the public even when others weren’t always kind to him, and he was also a helping humanitarian who loved aiding people in need. But we’ve known that already through decades of documentation. Now with the platform of film and his family involvement, it should be time to show us what the media didn’t want to show: the torturous psychological effects these persisting pressures of fame had on Michael. It’s a no brainer that being critical of Michael’s flaws wouldn’t be very existent in the universe of this film, given his estate and family’s heavy oversight of the film, but there’s still a nuance of humanity you can capture through the toll of fame and superstardom standards had on him. That’s not being critical of him, but rather just empathizing with the real troubles he had to go through that we weren’t always given the opportunity to see. Now’s the time to reveal the truth and deeper troubles Michael went through, but they didn’t.
One of the main examples of my frustration from them shamefully shying away from Michael’s struggle was scene after the Pepsi incident in the hospital. After he’s rushed into the hospital with a degree of burns on the top his head, it only shows a vague emotional embrace between Michael and his mother with no further context besides a cleche emotional line. Instead of diving deeper into Michael’s psyche of how the incident affected his mental state long after, it decides to focus on how fans supported Michael from outside the hospital to cheer him on for a speedy recovery, and how Michael saw the incident survival as God giving him grace to live more days. The film’s ultimately a disservice to the real nuance of what Michael went through beyond powering through with a smile because even beyond powering through, the effects of his weariness likely quietly persisted in his troubled mind that hated the limelight more than he loved it some days. The film’s essentially a underwhelming glory bask of his legacy in the field of music and as the happy person the media pushed on many, through half baked recreations of his iconic music videos and visual fests of moonwalking and dancing, with rapidly skipping over chances to flesh out more emotional storytelling beyond phoned in moments playing it safe in terms of digging deeper to find a more grounded, emotionally earned tone beyond blockbuster formula appeal. Jaafar Jackson is great in the regard of stepping into the role of Michael as an artist and performer. He completely embodies the full body movement spirit of Michael onstage with getting the dance moves and voice to a tee. But in terms of emotionally complex work, he has nothing to work with beyond having a little happy smile and seldom fear from the shadows of his abusive father. The inner workings of Michael is a vague idea of how he was a superhuman superstar, rather than trying to find that balance of better understanding the grounded person he was behind that persona.
The part of Michael I did find a bit fascinating was the envisionment of his childhood under the abusive fatherhood of Joe Jackson who led the Jackson five. Seeing young Michael get abused and indoctrinated into the industry like that so young, is heartbreaking and haunting. It’s a complicated look of a young boy not knowing how to process the life he leads of fame, loving the perks of the spotlight performing but hating the fact of his fun child innocence slowly being taken away, with him being treated like a vapid money & fame machine more than a child meant to set aside time with fun. Coleman Domingo at times can be haunting as the abusive father of Joe Jackson, having a menacing presence of eyes expressing deep anger that overtakes the screen every time he steps in. My problem though with Joe Jackson portrayed in the movie isn’t Coleman’s performance, but how he’s written. After a while, his terrifying presence becomes redundant and lazy, making him appear in scary style like the Boogeyman, ready to rip Michael away from a solo career and back to play with his brothers for one last chance of collective fame. While you could say this is the one aspect that adds more nuance to the struggle of Michael’s adult life in fame, it gets repetitive and drained of complexity really fast, watering down Joe Jackson into a classic recycled trope of a manipulative and abusive father, rather than making an authentic and individual entity of Joe Jackson.
Besides its flaw of failing to bring any complexity to the narrative or characters, you’d think the recreations of his iconic moments on stage and behind the music video camera would at least be a part of excitement in the midst of the film’s vapidness, but even that’s still brought down by Fuqua’s mediocre direction for the movie. The visuals are somehow one of the most phony things of all about this movie, sucked into the typical superficial and overly lit look too many modern films fall into. In a way, it feels too modern for the times Michael made his videos in, with the real version of him making a better authentic spectacle even without the technical capabilities and forced attempts at making it look stunning this film has. The film’s concert sequences also fall into the annoying editing trap editor of this, John Ottoman also fell into with Bohemian Rhapsody. The technical missteps ruin the immersion of the concert scenes, having far too many unnecessary cuts to crowd reactions of fans in awe when all fans in theaters really care about is the man moonwalking on stage. Even when it does focus on Michael, it still tries too hard to have multiple variations of shots on Michael’s performance when one angle is enough.
Michael, is largely a disappointment, with making a bare minimum attempt to do a service to the legacy and personal story he left behind. Despite the affair of loved ones the making of this film involved and the resources the team had to pull into deeper aspects of Michael’s life, it seems as if very little care and understanding of Michael was put into this movie beyond boring attempts of idolizing the pop legend he was and choosing to not have emotional moments be build ups, but random, spontaneous moments with no intention besides being approached as something you might as well fast forward past to go straight to the Thriller music video.
Rating: 1.5/5
