Better Man, the story of Robbie Williams: a bold biopic, but one that fails to illuminate the life it tells
Better Man: The Robbie Williams Story ( Better Man, UK, USA, Australia, France, China/2024). Director: Michael Gracey. Screenplay: Simon Gleeson, Oliver Cole and Michael Gracey. Music: Batu Sener. Photography: Erik Wilson. Cast: Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton, Damon Herriman and Anthony Hayes. Duration: 135 minutes. Rating: Suitable for ages 16 and up. Our opinion: good.
The biography of a rock star allows creative liberties not often allowed by other types of celebrities. The reason may well be that the state of consciousness shaped by a vigorous current of drug use, the connection to nonsense and free association of certain lyrics, and the psychedelia of many artists' visual aesthetics are better represented in fantasy, in provocative and unexpected ideas, than in an attachment to historical facts and realism.
Better Man , inspired by the life of British singer Robbie Williams, perhaps he has dared to try the most daring of the ideas seen in this popular genre: his protagonist is not embodied by an actor who tries to reproduce the physical aspect or what he has identified as the essence of the character, but by a digitally created ape that looks like it escaped from the Planet of the Apes franchise. There are not many explanations for such a leap into the void . At the beginning, the character says that he wants to show the public how he sees himself and then that he never managed to evolve beyond his 15 years. In an unexpected Darwinist touch, the monkey would then be a metaphor for his personal involution.
Creatively, one can only praise the audacity of such an act. At the same time, it seems like the worst idea in the world: this is a biography of an idol in which the idol (or an actor who closely resembles him) never appears. The film's main audience (Robbie Williams fans) will probably feel alienated by having their object of desire turned into a cocaine-addicted humanoid chimpanzee.
The film makes a very uncomplimentary presentation of its protagonist. Although it uses the characteristic rise, fall and rise again arc of almost all biopics , the main antagonist is Robbie Williams himself. This is not a self-indulgent story of how he faced the thousand obstacles that the world puts in the way of achieving his dreams, but of how he became his own worst enemy and how he conquered his own demons. At the same time, the fact that the story is so focused on his interiority, on the war of nerves with himself, does not leave much space to show what is usually the main enigma of biographies: what is the uniqueness of this subject, what made him become one in a million.
You only have to watch a 15-minute interview with Williams (his appearances on Graham Norton's talk show are particularly good) to understand why he is a star: he is charismatic, funny, boastful and self-deprecating all at once. When he is on fire, Williams has the gift of automatically and effortlessly capturing the audience's full attention. In its 132 minutes, for all its self-parody, this film fails to find that aspect of his personality, his timeless charisma, and fails to offer any insight into how an uncontrolled, childish, egocentric, envious, lazy addict with no great singing talent could have become Britain's biggest pop idol.
The explanation that Better Man gives is restricted to its musical numbers and, in particular, to an extraordinary rendition of the hit “Rock DJ”, which takes over Regent Street in London’s West End. It is the film’s best moment. Sadly, its creative risk and welcome lack of condescension did not find a reward: it was a worldwide flop and failed to recoup even a quarter of its budget. For once, the idol proved much more tolerant of an unflattering portrayal than his own fans.
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