Dramatizing the life of famous musicians has become a Hollywood staple. Biopics about Ray Charles (2004), Freddie Mercury (2018), Elton John (2019), and, more recently, Bob Dylan (2024) have done well at the box office; they’ve also captivated film critics, earning Oscar nods and in some cases, top awards. Sometimes casting relatively unknown actors in the starring roles who also do their own singing has added theatrical heft and fresh energy to these productions. Typically, earlier biopics relied on established movie stars lip-syncing a singer’s best known: for example, Jessica Lange, in “Sweet Dreams” (1985), about her country singer Patsy Cline. The effect on movie audiences and critics alike was mixed. Last year’s Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” cast up-and-comer Timothée Chalamet in the starring role, and his highly praised musical performance, capturing Dylan’s mannerisms and phrasing perfectly, helped earn the film eight Oscar nominations, a record for this movie sub-genre.
There’s another feature of these latest biopics that sets them apart from their predecessors: namely, the directors’ decision to focus the script on a single poignant episode in the singer’s career rather than trying to capture its full breadth. “A Complete Unknown” zeroes in on Dylan’s decision to abandon his acoustic folk roots in favor of electric instruments, dramatized by his breakout performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. The film becomes not just an examination of an early critical turning point in Dylan’s career — many more would follow, in fact — but a meditation on the need to shed the demands and expectations of others to strike out on one’s own, despite the backlash and ostracism it provokes. “A Complete Unknown” is a period piece of sorts; it speaks to a time and a place in history when the rock counterculture flourished and transformed America. Dylan’s transition embodied the shift and also powerfully defined it, and so it remains a landmark in musical innovation that continues to inspire.
Our culture of musical celebrity is boundless, and these films can be endlessly streamed for additional revenue (as has been the case with “Deliver Me”), so the prospect of a box office “win” — with opportunities for cross-promotion — is golden.
Contrast the success of “A Complete Unknown” to another, more recent biopic about rock-and-roll superstar Bruce Springsteen. The film adopts a similar strategy, focusing narrowly on the events surrounding Springsteen’s recording of his iconic album “Nebraska” in 1982. Here again, a relative newcomer, Jeremy Allen White, is cast in the lead and delivers a vibrant performance, with convincing renditions of some of Springsteen’s most beloved songs. The film takes us deep into the singer’s personal story — his troubled relationship with his father, his working-class roots, and his ambivalent feelings about fame, which left him confused and uneasy about his personal identity and musical trajectory. “Nebraska” was an act of defiant seclusion; Springsteen recorded it in a home studio and insisted that his record label, Columbia, not promote it. Emotionally raw, angry, and full of vitriol, the album speaks to the loneliness and desperation of Americans living in the heartland at the dawn of the Reagan era and to Springsteen’s own sense of disconnectedness and personal disarray during this same period.
So why doesn’t the film “work”? Despite heavy promotion by Springsteen himself, the film bombed at the box office, earning just $4 million in its initial run (against a production budget of $55 million). The singer’s public trashing of Donald Trump on the eve of the film’s release surely didn’t help; half of his potential audience probably leans conservative. But “Nebraska” is truly iconoclastic; though recorded at the same time Springsteen produced some of his best-known, rollicking hits (“Born in the USA” and “Glory Days,” among them), it doesn’t disguise Springsteen’s melancholy discomfort under a veneer of patriotic optimism (which, in fact, was only a veneer). There’s a mood of dark pessimism that pervades “Nebraska,” and inevitably, the movie too. It’s basically a bummer. Charting Springsteen’s descent into himself — as he abandoned his fans and his boisterous and beloved E Street Band — and openly despaired of his future may not be the uplifting storyline that many had hoped for, or expected, from the Boss.
So, chalk it up as a misfire of sorts. No doubt, the industry will learn from it. Directors may be getting a little too experimental in their thematic approach, expanding the traditional boundaries and pacing of the biopic and taking some egregious liberties with the facts. (One example: Springsteen’s “girlfriend” in “Deliver Me” is a pure invention, placed there only to support the narrative). And the singer also had an unusually formative role in the direction of “Deliver Me from Nowhere,” making it something of a vanity project to boot.
Rest assured, though, the public’s appetite for biopics is growing. Our culture of musical celebrity is boundless, and these films can be endlessly streamed for additional revenue (as has been the case with “Deliver Me”), so the prospect of a box office “win” — with opportunities for cross-promotion — is golden. These last two prodigious efforts broke with tradition in another way: They both featured musicians who are still alive and performing and still eminently bankable. (So did 2019’s “Rocket Man,” about Elton John). So, expect this industry trend to continue. There are literally dozens of other contemporary popular musicians — Eric Clapton, James Taylor, and Dolly Parton, to name just three — some still in their prime, with compelling life stories just waiting to be told.
