the change is gonna do me good

I grew up listening to my parents’ favorite music when I was a kid. A lot of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s touchpoints of music, especially that which a tween girl would be listening to, just don’t exist for me. I could probably hum a couple of bars of a New Kids on the Block song, maybe, if I tried real hard. (I was super into Mariah Carey, though.)

Instead, my childhood was a lot of the Eagles and Billy Joel and Neil Young and the Highwaymen.

(There’s a whole other newsletter thing lurking in me somewhere about how I spent a long time running away from the music I grew up with — years spent eschewing folk and country and anything roots-related — before I came full circle back to it in my adulthood. Stay tuned, I guess!)

My childhood was also a lot of Elton John.

One of my tween/teen memories is being in the house alone while my parents were out (usually dad was at work and mom was mowing the lawn or in the garden). I’d fire up the record player and while I had a lot of music to choose from, I remember one of my favorites to put on was Elton John. A lot of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road but I definitely remember breaking out Honky Chateau and Tumbleweed Connection too.

What better songs for a weird kid in the middle of nowhere to fall for?

So my out-of-time music tastes as a kid didn’t do much to prepare me for things like “having stuff in common with other kids your age”, but it did pretty much guarantee that I was going to see an Elton John biopic as soon as humanly possible. It wouldn’t have mattered to me if it had gotten trashed in reviews; I was pretty much a guaranteed ticket the second I heard that the movie was going to exist.

I’ve managed to see Rocketman three times already. I’m trying to tell myself I don’t need to see it a fourth, and it’ll be out for purchase before I know it.

(I’ve got a long holiday weekend. Let’s be honest: I’ll probably go see it again.)

Watching semi-fictional-Elton-John slowly, and then quickly, try to kill himself over the course of two hours shouldn’t be as compelling as it is. The movie’s somewhat heavy-handed at times. The dialogue is sometimes clunky, especially in scenes where the movie is trying to convey serious emotion through things other than song. The wig they stick Richard Madden in at first is just dreadful. Renate, the woman Elton is married to briefly, doesn’t even get given a name on screen until after they’re divorced.

But I loved it, instantly, from the very first glimpse of Elton, feathered wings and all, bursting through a set of doors.

(Where’s the think-piece about Elton, slowly shedding the trappings of fame, over the course of the group therapy scenes, from a sequined devil to a man in a dull grey sweatsuit? If it doesn’t exist yet, then someone tell me where to pitch this piece, I will write it.)

I didn’t know about the fantasy/jukebox musical elements to the movie, going in, but now I can’t imagine it any other way. Aside from the ways the musical element is more practical — I’m particularly thinking of the “Pinball Wizard” and “Honky Cat” sequences that pretty clearly show the passage of time (it’s montage time and I for one am here for it) — I’m imagining how much of a downer this movie would be if it was just a straight up biopic-with-occasional-songs. The musical bits — even the ones at heavy sections, like the “Rocket Man” sequence — inject a bit of levity and flair into a movie that is, once again, about a man essentially killing himself with drugs, a movie which should not be nearly as charming and fun as it is.

In each viewing, I just couldn’t stop thinking about the work that Taron Egerton does with his face. The camera spends so much time in tight on him. He’s so often swaddled in hats and ridiculous costumes and oversized glasses, which makes the subtle work he does with his expression even more remarkable. What he does with his eyebrows, the shifting of his eyes, a twitch of the lips ends up speaking volumes.

The apprehension, the fear when he’s waiting to know if Bernie’s going to care if he’s gay. That scene takes just seconds but the tension in his face and his body is wrenching.

The childlike wonder on his face as he’s driven through Los Angeles for the first time.

The absolute innocent hope on his face as he tries to find a way to get John Reid to stick around after their first night together, and that expression slowly sliding into desperation when he realizes he’s not going to get what he wants. Kills me absolutely every time, the flicker of heartbreak that gets hidden away.

The emotions that slide across his face when he goes to talk to both of his parents. The anger, then horror, on his face as he comes out to his mom.

(I didn’t pick up until the second viewing how easily affectionate his dad was with his new kids, and how he couldn’t even bring himself to shake Elton’s hand, and then I was just full of rage for something that may or may not have happened years before I was even born.)

The 180-degree shifts from flat, sad, a little broken to huge smiles, the stage face, to go out and do a show. I think anyone who’s ever been a performer in any capacity knows about that switch you have to flip to go out and do your job.

Long live Taron Egerton’s beautiful, expressive face, is what I’m saying here.

Richard Madden being so beautiful and yet playing someone so awful — there’s an interview quote floating out there somewhere from Bernie Taupin that basically says “John Reid should consider himself lucky they got someone as good-looking as Richard to play him” — still feels like it should be a crime.

I didn’t expect my recent media consumption to center around “people who just desperately want to be loved but don’t think they’re allowed to be or perhaps even capable of it” (see also: Fleabag) but, like: okay, universe, I see you. I get it. Sheesh.