Better Man? It actually makes perfect sense.”>
Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage
Robbie Williams, like beans on toast or the Royal family, is something that makes sense to British people and is completely alien to an American mind. On paper, an all-singing, all-dancing biopic of Williams — one of the most successful British artists of all time — as both a celebration of his life and an introduction to the uninitiated, is probably long overdue. But in Better Man, the newest musical biopic that aims to do just that, things are a little different. Williams is portrayed by a CGI monkey with zero acknowledgement of the situation. Imagine if in the climactic scene of Bohemian Rhapsody it wasn’t Oscar winner Rami Malek inhabiting the role of Freddie Mercury but a hairy backed Planet of the Apes-style primate — that’s Better Man. And weirdly, in this dizzyingly maximalist movie, it all (just about) makes perfect sense.
To understand why Williams is played by a digital ape you must first understand him as a human. Williams, or Robbie as he is referred to by millions of adoring fans, is comfortably one of the most famous men in Britain. A former member of the wildly popular ‘90s boyband Take That turned solo giant, his songs are karaoke staples, his love life the stuff of tabloid legend, and his live shows fill stadiums across the globe. His good humor and down-to-earth personality add primary color to songs about love and chasing a good time. (Conversely, his song “Angels,” a mawkish mega-ballad released in 1997, is among the nation’s most requested funeral songs.) Robbie is everything to everyone: teen idol, Saturday-night entertainer, comedian, show-off, footy legend, object of desire, a grandma’s dream, and the nation’s best mate. An American equivalent doesn’t quite exist but think Justin Timberlake if he was actually likeable, and you’re close.
Understandably, this kind of career comes with a large dose of pressure attached. “Quite often Rob will say, ‘I’m just like a performing monkey’ or ‘I’m up the back like a performing monkey,’” Better Man director Michael Gracey recently told the BBC. “It just sparked this idea of, we’ve got this chance to tell this story, not from the perspective of how we see Rob, but how he sees himself.”
In Better Man, Gracey, who previously directed The Greatest Showman, captures Willams as both a performing monkey and an unevolved man trapped as the teenager who left home and became famous overnight.
The magical realist film starts in his childhood, a time spent in the Midlands of England with his beloved mom and grandma, as well as a police officer father preoccupied by a dream of being Stoke’s answer to Frank Sinatra. It’s a testament to Gracey’s direction (and to the work of Weta, the special effects company that created Gollum in The Lord of the Rings) that you quickly forget that you’re watching a monkey on screen and, instead, get caught up in the whirlwind of Williams’ life as he seeks to emulate his father’s ambition and scratch the itch at the bottom of a child’s attention-seeking soul.
The structural framework of Better Man does a solid job of showing his journey from Take That in the early ‘90s before later, while harboring dreams of being a “serious” songwriter, to quitting to go solo and becoming hugely successful on his own terms. The band scenes are largely played for laughs but also give the viewer insight into how ego has both powered and hampered Williams throughout his career. Whether it is clashing with his bandmates, a devilish manager, or, in one memorable scene, Liam Gallagher, Better Man smartly depicts the way in which confidence and insecurity are a hair’s breadth away from one another.
Gracey captures Willams as both a performing monkey and an unevolved man trapped as the teenager who left home and became famous overnight.
Time and time again, we see that there is only so much space for an oversized sense of self and that it often leads to a life of loneliness. The scenes of Williams alone in a palatial country mansion trying to lose weight ahead of a sold-out concert are among the most heartbreakingly sad in a movie that’s unafraid to pull on the heartstrings. The fact this is all happening to a chimp also weirdly helps to emphasize the pain and suffering Williams has clearly felt throughout his career. It’s easy to be numbed to the plight of the A-list, but seeing it through the eyes of a little monkey? You want to protect him with your life. In that way, the decision to portray Williams as a chimp works beyond mere metaphor; it’s a visual shock intended to break us out of any pre-established leanings.
Better Man can be a little cliched in parts — nobody will be really shocked to discover that being successful can be an isolating and alienating feeling. And it certainly works better as a musical than biopic, with Gracey turning “Rock DJ” and “She’s The One” into heart-racing choreographed moments. But it’s to the film’s credit that it can still make overtrodden tropes feel newly resonant through the simple switch of watching an ape snort cocaine and headline Knebworth. Better Man would be less compelling without its furry and quietly astute gimmick.
