Stories can be found everywhere, not just in books but in television, movies, theater, music, dance, and even paintings. Oftentimes, the best stories are about life itself, and I’m not talking about the circle of life sung about in The Lion King, but the lives of individuals. The story of someone’s life is called a biography, and biographies can be transformed from page to screen in biopics.
Biopics have been around since the dawn of cinema, the first being Joan of Arc in 1900. Biopics tend to follow the rise to fame, height of fame, downfall, and redemption formula. Though early biopics generally painted figures as saints, airbrushing out their major flaws. After all, the subject is the hero of their own story, and heroes in those days were flawless. It wasn’t until the 1970s and 80s with films like Gandhi and Coal Miner’s Daughter those biopics started getting into the nitty gritty about a famous individual’s life.
Biopics have come a long way since then, with blockbusters like Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), Elvis (2022), and Oppenheimer (2023), which won an Oscar for Best Picture in 2024. One of the reasons biopics are on the rise is due to the actors and how the success of a film hinges on their mesmerizing performances. Several actors have won Academy Awards for their portrayal of real-life figures, including Gary Oldman who played Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour (2017), Jamie Foxx who played Ray Charles in Ray (2004), and Meryl Streep who played Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (2011).
Biopics also have the habit of transporting the audience to a bygone era. If the audience knows the protagonist’s life, they can predict where the movie is going. The audience becomes omniscient. At times, visiting a different era of a person’s life helps audiences realize how much a person can change. Steve Jobs wasn’t born a multi-millionaire, but he got to that point through a series of events, including dropping out of college, getting a job at Atari designing video games, and starting Apple with Steve Wozniak in his parents’ garage. Seeing a person go from humble beginnings to mega fame & fortune doesn’t just make a good underdog story but can completely change the way society sees them. The celebrity of a person slowly fades away when people see them at their lowest.
Nevertheless, the rise of biographical films does not come without its critics. Yet, let me first clarify that documentaries do not fit into the biopic category as they often contain real footage and interviews of the subject. Biopics use actors to portray real people and tend to employ creative liberties on the individual’s story to make it more appealing to the audience.
These movies are still based on true stories, so there must be some pursuit of truthfulness. However, with the pursuit of truthfulness comes the invasion of privacy. The person’s entire life is shown for all the world to see, so many question the ethnics of biopics. For instance, even though Bohemian Rhapsody became one of the highest-grossing biopics ever, earning $900 million worldwide, two of Queen’s band members, John Deacon and Freddie Mercury (who passed away in 1991), had no say in how they were portrayed in the film.
Sometimes, the lack of consent from the subjects means historical inaccuracies and details that are untrue. This can pose an issue to the individuals being portrayed, as it can cause the public to have a distorted view of them. Having a distorted view of celebrity leads to one of the biggest criticisms of biopics. Some say that biopics are a driving force behind the “cult of celebrity.” The cult of celebrity is a society’s tendency to obsess over, idolize, or worship famous individuals. Famous or not, people are people, but biopics only perpetuate the cult of celebrity by making them the hero of the story about their life, adding a kind of mythic allure to the person.
This does not mean that biopics should be wiped out altogether. These stories were made to inspire and show that behind an image, there’s the real person. Many times, the best way to do so is to avoid telling a person’s entire story from start to finish. Not many people have the patience to watch every little detail of a person’s life shown on the big screen, and even if they did, the movie would be crazy long. Therefore, one secret to mastering biopics is to focus on a particular period of a person’s life, as seen in the movie Lincoln (2012), which focuses on Abraham Lincoln’s life during the Civil War.
A second secret to mastering biopics is to aim for interpretation instead of objective reality. For example, The Greatest Showman (2017) was not a straightforward biography but adapted various parts of P.T. Barnum’s life by making it a musical and incorporating a more modern style of music and visual effects to enhance the magic that was the creation of the circus. Another way in which biopics have taken a more creative interpretation was in I’m Not There (2007). This movie documenting the many eras of Bob Dylan’s life had six different actors (including a woman) play him. This movie shows that sometimes having different actors portraying the same person can allow audiences to grasp different sides of a human being. People change as they grow and experience life and sometimes bringing in different actors can highlight flaws that weren’t apparent in younger versions.
Then there are films that really push the envelope, like Better Man (2024), in which Robbie Williams is portrayed as a CGI chimp. Or Piece by Piece(2024), which captures the life of Pharrell Williams in Lego. These innovative biographical films show that the genre doesn’t have to be a from birth to death highlight reel of a person’s life. Movies capture stories, and because life is a story, filmmakers should have the freedom to capture it in whatever way they see fit. Besides, unconventional biopics make for a more captivating experience for the audience, so they don’t feel like they’re sitting through a history lecture.
All in all, life is a story, and when it comes to capturing someone’s life on film, it’s best to aim for a more imaginative interpretation instead of a straightforward documentation. The audience should be fully immersed in the person’s story so when they walk away from the film, they learn something new about not only the person but human nature as well.