As a rule, I dislike biopics. There are two reasons for this. One, I often ask myself would I be interested in this film if it weren't about someone famous and the answer is usually no. [ed note: for related post, see: Savage Race - our endless obsession with wealth and power] Two, they are often too broad and unfocused. Trying to tell the breadth of a person's life in two or three or six hours is a fool's endeavor. As a straightforward narrative, you get something lifeless like Rhapsody in Blue. In its more artsy incarnations you are given a fractured portrait that can work very well indeed (Andrei Rublev, not a true biopic, but close enough) or not well at all (I'm Not There).
There are exceptions: recently, Milk, not so recently, Capote and Ed Wood, and these films succeed where other biopics fail because the writer and director decided to focus on a singular event or trajectory in the subject's life. In Milk, on his almost accidental rise to political prominence; in Capote, on the writing of In Cold Blood and its aftermath; in Ed Wood on the relationships that evolved during the making of his disasterpiece, Plan 9 from Outer Space. None of these excellent films contains a Freudian scene from the character's childhood that explains away the complex behavior of the adult. I don't need to see the psychological roots of Ed Wood's cross-dressing and angora fetish. Showing me that he has them tells me what I need to know about him. Citizen Kane (another faux biopic, but closer than Rublev) is the exception to the rule here, and really, the tidiness of Rosebud may be its biggest false note.
I suppose the irony is a good biopic is short on biography. And what tells you more about a character, a series of scenes slapped together of a big, sprawling, glamorous life spanning six or seven decades, or a tightly structured story showing him/her blossom or disintegrate as he/she confronts a specific challenge? Rolando Teco wrote a wonderful post entitled "The Root of all Comedy: Specificity." The same could be argued about the biopic.
This then, leads me to pose some questions to you: What are your favorite biopics? Which are the most overrated? And who do you think deserves to have a biopic made about them, other than me and you, of course?
Note: Coinciding with the release of Milk, Time Magazine published a (mostly sane) list of the best biopics.
