Maestro and 3 Other Recent Biopics About Musicians for Everyone Who Loved A Complete Unknown
Honest stories about some of the biggest names in the music industry.
The last few years have seen a boom in the music biopic genre. Often these are serial biographies of a single artist, but not always. As the movie about a young Bob Dylan prepares to overtake Anora at the Oscars, we tell you about other examples of new music movies.
1. Maestro, 2023
This movie was passed over for an Oscar a year ago, although its director and star, Bradley Cooper, apparently had high hopes.
The skillfully made-up artist portrays Leonard Bernstein, one of the most popular conductors and academic composers of the last century. Bernstein is a figure who introduced and reconciled the mass public to classical music, linking it to the world of musicals and jazz.
As a movie hero, Bernstein may be a little less dramatic or poetic than Bob Dylan. Still, Cooper's film is almost like a musical, with interpolations from Mahler to R.E.M.
2. Bob Marley: One Love, 2024
In the 1970s, Jamaica was on the brink of civil war. Fortunately, the island is the birthplace of world-famous reggae patriarch Bob Marley, a spiritual unifier of the nation who can use his authority to quell the conflict.
Not everyone wants reconciliation: the movie opens with assassins wounding the singer, his wife, and his manager. No such luck: a few hours later, Marley and his wife are back on stage after being patched up in the hospital.
But then the couple fled the country to record a new album. The record, called Exodus, will go down in history, but a London doctor will give the man a death sentence.
3. Midas Man, 2024
Brian Epstein is a manager who happened to hear the Liverpool Four in one of the basement clubs and was eager to make stars out of them. Without a doubt, he succeeded.
In the last decade, more and more biographical or pseudo-graphic films have focused on the relationship between talent and the managers who helped them on their way to stardom.
Joe Stephenson's film fits in well with a number of not-so-traditional biopics, charging screens with unbridled energy of romantics and idealists who were passionate about their business no matter what.
4. Better Man, 2024
The movie, in which Robbie Williams took a direct part, tells how a guy from a poor neighborhood dreamed of fame, how he drew a golden ticket to the boy band Take That, managed to make a super-successful solo career and emerged from the abyss of alcohol and drugs.
The main feature of the movie, of course, is the appearance of the main character, who appears as a monkey on the verge of becoming a man. It's even strange that Better Man failed at the box office.