Rocketman

Watford FC were Elton John’s boyhood team. As his birth name Reg Dwight, Elton would go to games with his dad, a few miles from their home in Pinner. Having a strained relationship, it was the one thing the two men did together. Cheering on Cliff Holton and Barry Endean, it was a golden time for the boy: his heroes in front of him; his hero beside him. Years later, his music career took off and he left the club behind. His busy tour schedule simply did not allow him to keep up to date with the matches. Then an interview with the NME brought him back. Watford’s finances were ailing, on death’s door; they need a miracle man to come and revive their fortunes. The topic of a charity gig came up. In 1974 Elton along with Rod Stewart came to play at Vicarage Road, making a packet for the club. That day Elton was invited in the board room and over 40 years on he still hasn’t really left. From 1976 to 1987 Elton presided over the club’s greatest period. Appointing Graham Taylor was his masterstroke as together the pair oversaw Watford’s climb from the fourth rung of football to runners-up in the FA Cup and top division. For a club who nearly went out of business to become 'the business' proved apt for a chairman who made a similar climb. So Sir Elton is one of our own. His name is on a stand. His songwriter Bernie Taupin’s lyrics above, I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words, how wonderful life is while your in the world.’ Any film about him would therefore be of interest to me. The picture to use football parlance is a screamer into a top corner – it certainly is no damp squib.

Graham Taylor and Elton John in 1977.

Director Dexter Fletcher is at the helm of Rocketman. You might remember him as the child actor in Press Gang or the adult actor in Band of Brothers; if I’m honest, I remember him replacing Dominic Holland on GamesMaster (that’s right the one that had Patrick O’Brien looking like he’d put in an iPhone photo booth). However, his stock in trade is now filmmaking. Sunshine On Leith is his calling card; the music of The Proclaimers put to an original storyline. Think deep fried Mama Mia and you’d be close to picturing its gritty exuberance . From there he had a box-office hit with Eddie The Eagle, a national treasure story of an idiot learning to fly. After he sealed his place at the top table by rescuing Bohemian Rhapsody after director Bryan Singer fell out with the cast. Fletcher came in and made a movie out of the mess, scoring a Best Picture nod for the biopic.

Rocketman though isn’t a make do and mend film; it’s Fletcher’s rich tapestry woven from his own imagination. The first thing to say that it isn’t straight biopic like Bohemian Rhapsody. No it’s more of a homosexual one (a zinger of a joke there for people that thought the Freddie film ignored his sexuality). No, it isn’t nuts and bolts, tab A fits B, storytelling. It’s a fantasy musical that has time, people and songs behaving unexpectedly: new songs are used to score old moments; non-singers burst into songs and strict chronology is ignored in favour of creative truth. Bohemian Rhapsody had Fletcher as ghost-writer, channeling Singer’s voice to turn in a product for mainstream sales; Rocketman though is his and writer Lee Hall’s own fantastical invention; together they have fashioned something altogether more idiosyncratic than executives may like; the result though is more true given the film is centred on a man famed for invention, reinvention.

Dexter Fletcher: games master turned film maker.

We begin with absurdity. A devil walks into a group circle designed to exorcise demons. It is a treatment centre, the devil Elton in trashy costume. Symbolism plays a big part in the movie. At first when he sits down he’s reluctant to talk, doesn’t understand how it will help. Through some probing he begins to tell his story of how he came to be here. His first telling takes us out of rehab into the suburbs of Pinner. To the sound of Bitch is Back, grown up Elton is Del and Rodders at a wake, standing out like a sore thumb as the neighbourhood dances around him. It establishes early how Elton wasn’t born into ostentation, rather a normal world of milk bottles on the door, washing on the line.

The framing device of rehab works a treat as over the course we see a kind of reverse metamorphosis as the colourful butterfly becomes a moth again. This shedding of flamboyance is what Elton needs to become human. Because somewhere on the highway of rock n’ roll he’s broken down and requires desperate repair. Through the flashbacks into his life, we learn how and why things spun out of control.

Elton didn't get the message fancy dress was cancelled.

Elton’s upbringing was not an easy one. Although the family’s finances seem comfortable, the relationships weren't. His dad the archetypal absent father. Paradoxically, this absence is felt more when he is there than when he isn’t. He shows no affection to his son and denigrates him at every turn. When Elton asks for a hug it’s unforthcoming. Hugging isn’t something men do. Elton’s mother is dissatisfied in her marriage and takes it out on the boy. There’s a sense that the hatred the couple have for one another finds voice in how they speak to their son. In a spine-tingling moment the 2001 hit I Want Love is transposed to Elton’s childhood with mother, father and young Elton all contributing to the lyrics, ‘I can’t love, shot full of holes, Don’t feel nothing I just feel cold.’ A musical allows the taciturn to communicate their feelings. Elton’s dad would never expose his emotions but the device makes him more rounded, so we can see there is some complexity to his brutishness. At times then it feels like Distant Voices, Still Lives, Terence Davis’ kitchen sink drama where ordinary people sing their pain, yet when Elton discovers music the musical morphs into something else.

With Elton answering an ad in a musical publication he is paired with Bernie Taupin. Taupin will provide the lyrics and Elton the score. Initially, record company boss Dick James isn’t impressed (played brilliantly by Stephen Graham). When he hears Your Song though he knows that he’s onto something special. Thus begins Elton’s rise to superstardom. From the ground control of Pinner to Hollywood’s hills, he is the rocket man. 

The way Fletcher captures this ascendancy is sublime. When Elton plays LA’s iconic The Troubadour, Egerton takes flight mid-song. Gravity and reality is suspended as the singer floats from the piano stool, representing how his career is in lift off. Later, the spaceman trope is manifest when Elton plays the Dodgers Stadium. With the crowd roaring and America taken, Fletcher rocket fuels Elton into space. These dream-like sequences are perfect for the unreal world of celebrity. In a way it’s a surprise we have so many by-the-book biopics when the rock n’ roll life is far from that. Elton though is Icarus, he flies too close to the sun: burn out and crashing landing is coming. Houston, we have a problem. 

His combustion is presented in full. The drink, the drugs, the spending, the sham marriage. His freefall is ugly, his behaviour too. The poignant Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word sung by Jamie Bell (a perfect Bernie Taupin) shows how many people felt about Elton. Instead of playing by human rules, he was the bitchy diva, someone who apologised to no one when really he needed to apologise to everyone.

Apart from a misstep at the end where we see what Elton is up to now (is there anyone out there who really doesn’t know he’s now happily married? These black and white facts take us out of the colour of the film. They’re unnecessary), the film is a triumph. And for Watford fans I should add there are three nods to the team. Blink and you’ll miss them though. I missed one – The Girl had to tell me – but I spotted the other two.

For Watford fans, you’ll go anyway: he’s one of our own. For the rest of you, go and see a picture that is deep, intelligent and fun. Hall and Fletcher have found the perfect way to tell this story, so go and have a listen to it. 

Rocketman is available now.