The spectacle of Elton John’s descent is visualized with unforgettable drama in Rocketman’s opening scene. Wearing a lurid jumpsuit, a devil-horned headpiece, sequined heart-shaped glasses and a set of wings wider than a condor, the troubled performer races down a corridor to fill an empty seat in a group therapy circle. Catching his breath, he admits to being an alcoholic—and a cocaine and sex addict, a bulimic shopaholic and a prescription pill abuser unable to manage his anger. The fellow addicts look on almost spellbound at the apparition until the therapist asks, “What were you like as a child, Elton?”
His childhood self, a lad called Reggie Dwight, materializes; Elton sings “The Bitch is Back”; Reggie joins in, and the two of them burst out of the doors and into the outside world—the 1950s London suburban neighborhood where Reggie grew up. The street fills with dancers, their moves as sharp-elbowed as rock music, more athletic than graceful, as the number continues.
It’s an audacious opening, and for the most part, director Dexter Fletcher (who completed Bohemian Rhapsody) maintains the momentum even as the spectacle flirts with silliness. But of course, by the mid-’70s, Elton’s showmanship went beyond flirtation with silliness. It was a full-blown affair.
Taron Egerton plays the rock star with empathy (and resembles him physically as well). His Elton is a vivid, complicated, believable person. His hurt is palpable, as is the diffidence disguised by a glittering cloak of flamboyance. The story told by British screenwriter Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) follows—to a point in time—the autobiographical album Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, which encapsulated the creative relationship between Elton and lyricist Bernie Taupin that was the basis for their string of hits. However, Rocketman explores what Captain Fantastic ignored—Elton’s sexuality, of which most of his fans were oblivious when the LP appeared in 1975.
The Reggie who recreated himself as Elton came from a troubled home. As depicted in Rocketman, his father was a cold fish, and mum’s neglect at least gave him free range to discover piano under granny’s encouragement. Mum’s new husband, part of Britain’s Teddy Boy subculture, encouraged the lad’s interest in rock ’n’ roll. After more song and dance, Rocketman lands Elton on the road backing British tours by American soul acts. Their choreography and glamor impress him.
The real turning point was his encounter with Taupin (Jamie Bell), and the film only hints at how prolific they were. From 1969 through 1976, they wrote the songs that filled 13 albums (including one double LP). “I love you, I do—but not in that way,” Taupin tells Elton early on. They were brothers more than collaborators, and, in Rocketman, Taupin continually appears as the voice of reason that Elton refuses to hear—until it’s almost too late.
The therapy session invaded by the winged, bespectacled rock star provides the framework for the movie’s sequence of flashbacks. One particularly well-choreographed scene depicts life at the peak of Elton’s mid-’70s stardom as a worldwide shopping spree fueled by champagne, cocaine and sycophancy. But the giddy exuberance of walking on top of the world begins to slip. Elton loses track of time and location—“it’s lonely out in space,” as he sings in “Rocketman.” Relations with Taupin sour. The hits stop coming.
Rocketman is as much mythology as history, yet its tale isn’t so tall that it loses touch with the ground—even in that scene at L.A.’s Troubadour club where a still-unknown Elton levitates behind the piano and brings the audience with him into the air. The stars really were bright and captivating the imagination in that lost age when pop music mattered deeply.
