Biographical films are always tricky to navigate, largely because they need to choose a point of view to work from. For instance, when talking with other people about the recent biopic Elvis, some viewers were disappointed that we didn’t get to see Elvis Presley eating one of his weird sandwiches, or that we didn’t get the encounter with President Nixon. But the focus of that film was Elvis’ relationship with his manager, Tom Parker.
So we have to imagine that it’s going to become even more complicated when the film’s subject is still alive, as we delve into this episode’s films. First up is 2007’s I’m Not There. The life of Bob Dylan is examined through the viewpoints of five different fictional characters. Each character represents a specific phase of Dylan’s life.
In Part 2 we concentrate on 2014’s Love and Mercy, which centers on two specific eras of Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson. First we have his mid-60s period, which outlines the growing pains that the band went through, and then we jump to the 1980s, where he’s basically a broken man under the thumb of his therapist. We don’t get the whole story of how he got out from under there, but again it’s part of the film’s viewpoint that there are events in the story that we don’t get to see.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:Â
In our next episode we spend some time in Dublin, with a pair of films that have many points in common, including one that’s led to an interesting theory tying them together. First up is The Commitments, Alan Parker’s 1991 film about a band’s rise and fall. From there we jump to 2007 to talk about a truly delightful film called Once, written and directed by John Carney, about a week in the life of a pair of struggling musicians, and the songs that underline their relationship.