The Framing of a Biopic

Biopics have the potential to be one of the most interesting, creative genres, but so often they fall into familiarity.

Look at how happy he is. This is a happy movie.

A week ago I watched Tolkien (2019), and since I have been mulling over this genre. Biopics, or biographical pictures (or films), have risen into a very specific sort of public eye. For the past several years, nearly every Best Actor Oscar has been for a biopic. This includes the most recent winner, Rami Malek, for his role as Freddy Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody (2018). Bohemian Rhapsody was a movie criticized for its basic structure, weary tropes, and inaccuracy. I’m actually relatively unconcerned with the latter point, and I’ll talk about that later. But, I think it’s unfortunate that major Oscar-nominated and winning biopics can fairly be criticized as being generic and saccharine. This is a genre that I genuinely believe to have a lot of room to feature fascinating explorations of these people who have transformed our world. People of intense creativity and genius and wonder. A true reflection of these individuals ought to be creative and stimulating, not dull affairs – and there are many such movies that do exist. Of course, there are a lot of factors that influence whether a movie, nevermind a biopic, are good or not. In discussing biopic specifically, however, I’m always drawn towards the framing of the film, so this week I want to talk about framing and structure and how that can help or hinder your retelling of a legacy.

Broadly speaking, framing is the skeleton of a story. It’s the lens or perspective a director wants you to see the individual depicted. A lot of times in movies like this, the framing features in medias res storytelling, a term that translates to ‘in the middle of things.’ Essentially, it’s a story that isn’t being told strictly chronologically, we’re starting at a point late in the protagonist’s life (typically them at some major point in their fame) and then jumping back. For some biopics, the person’s entire life is framed from this perspective; their whole childhood and career has been leading to this climactic moment. For other films, this point in the story only frames a select set of events. In these cases, the director is less concerned with reliving the entire life of the protagonist, but more interested in telling a specific story, or examining a specific point in the person’s life. While this non-chronological exploration is common, it’s not the only way to frame a biopic. A director may open with a poignant introduction to our character, framing the protagonist with a leading question of some sort that will drive the film’s exploration of them. A study of framing should also understand that in every biopic there is a degree to which the director is selecting frames of the topic character’s life, while also disregarding other frames, other potentially pivotal moments. To do otherwise would be to bore the audience with scenes and characters who may only be tangentially connected to the main thesis. There is, of course, a main thesis. A core point the directors and writers are trying to make about their subject characters. To understand the movie’s framing is to understand this thesis, to understand what the movie is trying to say about its protagonist. The director, in framing the movie around a specific event, or a set of specific events, is saying ‘these are the moments you need to understand to understand this person.’ To that end, it is common to see characters or scenes who are condensed, being exaggerated versions of themselves. You will often see one character representing what may be two or several characters in the protagonist’s life, becoming a composite of what those people represent. At its core, the genre of biopic is all about artistic representation, and the framing is the lens through which we view the director’s representation.

I could continue to detail and explain, but sometimes it is simply best to show. I have a collection of biopics that I want to talk about, all using framing to different extents, and to different ends. The first of these I’ve already mentioned, and that’s Bohemian Rhapsody.

I'm half-convinced Rami Malek just took this movie so that he could strut around in leather pants. It's the choice we all would make.

Bohemian Rhapsody is a fairly standard affair for a musical biopic. Its opening puts us in the mind of Freddie Mercury, minutes before the Live Aid performance that would shake the world. The camera is set behind him as he goes through warm-ups, and then the shot cuts away just as he steps onto the stage. We then go back to 1970, following a younger Freddie Mercury as he discovers the band Smile, and forms them into the band we now know as Queen. For the most part, Bohemian Rhapsody plays out a bit like a Greatest Hits record, tracking through some major releases and major struggles, giving lots of time to incorporate everyone’s favourite songs, before returning to our opening and culminating with the big performance. Everything is structured around Live Aid, essentially going into Freddie Mercury’s head and showing all the forces and ideas that are about to influence this climactic performance. In Bohemian Rhapsody, Freddie Mercury’s entire life has been leading up to Live Aid. Thus, we see family conflicts resolved and damning diagnoses revealed all in the timeframe of this impending set-list. When the movie lavishly depicts the band’s performance, we intercut with audience reactions and close-ups of Rami Malek’s portrayal, so that we can read the events we’ve witnessed over the past ninety minutes into this culminating scene. Live Aid is able to satisfyingly pay off all of the arcs and themes the movie has built up.

The band Queen, pictured here elegantly reducing the songwriting process to a convenient few minutes.

Of course, life often isn’t quite that smooth. Bohemian Rhapsody got a lot of flack from critics for warping the timeline of the band to make this finale work. Of note, Freddie Mercury did not receive his AIDS diagnosis until long after Live Aid, whereas the movie paints his diagnosis as a key emotional factor in his performance. In response to some of this criticism, screenwriter Anthony McCarten replied, “we’re making a movie here, not a biography.”[1] McCarten creates an important distinction within the realm of biopics, these movies aren’t strict retellings as much as they are creative adaptions. Oftentimes, they give an idea or a sense of the individual rather than the entire fact. In Bohemian Rhapsody, that’s accomplished through this introspective exploration of Freddie Mercury, showing a slice of his life and framing it through this nervous meditation going into the Live Aid concert. Now, does this work? …Mostly. Bohemian Rhapsody is a fun, engaging film, but engages in a lot of creative liberties while still trying to present itself as a chronological look at Mercury’s life. For that matter, despite depicting a man of insane, frenetic creativity and energy, the film feels familiar. It engages in all of the old tropes and clichés and emotional touchstones of nearly every other biopic. While it’s framing offers an interesting look into the broader idea of Freddie Mercury, it ultimately fails because of how well-worn the tropes are.

Nicholas Hoult, pictured here near-dead after realizing his contract was going to force him to be in Dark Pheonix.

The framing of Tolkien, which I’ve previously reviewed, is similar but more engaged.[2] Here, director Dome Karukoski structures the movie around J.R.R. Tolkien’s time in the Somme. Frequently, we cut forward to Tolkien as a sick, drenched, half-delirious man in the trenches of World War 1, committed to the goal he has set for himself. Like Bohemian Rhapsody, Tolkien jumps back from here to the youth of the protagonist. This time, however, these aren’t the reflections of a nervous performer, but of a man on his deathbed, clinging to the moments in his life that were important to him. Every time we return to Tolkien in the Somme we return with a little bit more information, a little bit more context to understand his current struggle. We learn about Tolkien meeting and growing close with his friends, which gives us an understanding of the stakes as we return to Tolkien’s life in the war, and so on. Unlike Bohemian Rhapsody, the timeline in Tolkien lines up, and while we obviously don’t know every thought going through the author’s head, it is hardly a stretch to believe Karukoski’s depiction of a man holding tightly to what was important to him. Tolkien, then, gives us a glance into the major themes of Tolkien’s life through this extended framing device of his time in the Somme. As the movie begins to close and the events in this ‘present’ arc grow increasingly stark, the film takes on some truly haunting imagery that immediately impresses upon the reader the sort of dark scars the war left on Tolkien’s life. The movie never goes into its protagonist’s fame and publication like Bohemian Rhapsody, but by sticking to this brief section of Tolkien’s life, Tolkien is actually able to give a better and deeper reflection of its protagonist than Bohemian Rhapsody does. While Tolkien’s framing is able to give a certain emotional resonance to the film’s storytelling, it also keeps the movie contained. A lot of biopics are concerned with broadly ‘retelling’ an individual’s life, hitting all the big moments as Bohemian Rhapsody does. This is part of why you see Mercury’s AIDS diagnosis years before it actually occurs simply because that’s an important moment in Mercury’s life and so the film feels obliged to include it. The more focused the biopic, however, the deeper it is able to engage with the subject matter – I mean, Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech (2010) is entirely focused on King George VI’s impending declaration of war, and the struggles he faces in overcoming his speech impediment to prepare for it.

Rooney Mara is only in a handful of scenes, but her role in this opening casts a shadow on the whole film. That's what good framing does.

Take the gorgeous, immaculate Oscar-winning brainchild of Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher, The Social Network (2010). There are so many reasons this movie was more than just some flick about Facebook, including outstanding performances from Jessie Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer, and Justin Timberlake, and an enthralling score by Trent Reznor. But, in terms of how this movie was able to develop a creative and intriguing storyline out of the creation of Facebook, the framing is everything. The Social Network features multiple levels of framing all at once. First, the movie starts with a scene of Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg and Rooney Mara’s Erica Albright engaging in fast-paced conversation, sifting through a number of topics. Taking the idea of in medias res to heart, Sorkin’s script throws us directly in the middle of their conversation. Sorkin himself has stated that he’s fond of opening a script this way, as it signals to the audience from the start that they’re going to have to keep up and pay attention. Sure enough, this scene is a sign of things to come, and the pace of this opening keys us to the idea of conversations being the action pieces of the film, much like Sorkin’s other scripts. This scene also immediately paints a picture of Mark Zuckerberg for us, someone intensely intelligent and immaculate, someone with clear drive and passion, but also someone who either doesn’t understand or isn’t interested in social graces. By the time the opening credits roll, Albright breaks up with Zuckerberg, instigating the events of the movie. Fincher and Sorkin, through this opening, clearly show us that this isn’t going to be a movie about Facebook nearly as much as it’s going to be a movie about isolation, about tragedy in friendship, and about sacrifice.

I was going to make another career joke, but instead I want to say that Eisenberg's process for this movie was insane, and he genuinely deserves more dramatic roles.

Roughly fifteen minutes into the movie, we are introduced to our second framing device of the movie, one that cements the tragic feel of the film. We are shown that the events of this movie are reflections spurred by not one, but two deposition hearings; the first is a lawsuit from the Winklevoss twins (played by Armie Hammer) accusing Zuckerberg of having stolen their intellectual property, and the second is from Zuckerberg’s former best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). The film encourages the audience to ask how events transpired to lead Zuckerberg into these lawsuits. By intercutting to these depositions, the film is not only able to emphasize the themes of broken friendship and dark ambition but is also able to let these characters comment directly on their thoughts or opinions of key scenes as they are happening. Furthermore, since we are able to look at the events of the movie through three framing perspectives – the Winklevoss’ accusations, Saverin’s feeling of betrayal, and Zuckerberg’s own isolation – the audience is treated to a developed, in-depth exploration of the character of Mark Zuckerberg. Events are obviously dramatized, but their thematic resonance is made clear. Unlike Bohemian Rhapsody or Tolkien, this isn’t a simple retelling of events, the biases and opinions of characters are able to ring out. We aren’t just offered a single, broad perspective of the protagonist, but a layered and developed one. The audience is encouraged to think for themselves whether Mark Zuckerberg as depicted is a brilliant creator, sacrificing all for his art, or a liar and a cheater, burning down any friendships in a vain pursuit of passion.

Oh, look, Fassbender is doing 'framing.' Get it, it's funny.

If The Social Network is a top-down character study, it’s fair to say Sorkin’s next project is decidedly more expressionistic. Teaming up with director Danny Boyle instead of David Fincher, in 2015, Sorkin put out Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender. While Fincher took Sorkin’s dialogue and funneled it, creating a comprehensive court-room character study, Boyle goes the other direction. Steve Jobs is a movie much more keyed into the idea of broader representation. Single conversations take the place of long, ongoing debates, single moments may represent years. See, while the other movies I have discussed approach their subjects by looking at sections of their life – their young-adult life, the few years they spent working on a specific project – Steve Jobs narrows the focus even more. The entire movie is framed around the forty-five minutes that precede the opening conferences for the Apple Macintosh in 1984, the NeXT Computer in 1988, and the iMax in 1998. While a three-act structure is fairly common, here the three acts feel more like acts of a play than a movie. In each of these acts, we see Jobs’ developing relationships with steady ally Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), engineering genius Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogan), businessman John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), and Jobs’ alleged daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs (Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardine). The way these relationships develop in each act give us a snapshot of Jobs’ growing character. The distinct structure reveals just how representative everything in the movie is – obviously the conflict in Jobs’ life wasn’t contained to the forty-five minutes before each launch, but with this snapshot-like structure, we’re able to get a broader sense of who these characters are. More than the standard biopic, everything here is symbolic allegory. This play-like three-act structure allows Boyle and Sorkin to emphasize their unique themes and ideas, and also lend a figure like Steve Jobs all of the creative expression he deserves.

Seth Rogan absolutely kills it in this movie. Give him more dramatic roles too, please.

As Sorkin-penned, dialogue-driven biopic about genius inventors, The Social Network and Steve Jobs inevitably get a lot of comparison, and probably will for as long as they are in public consciousness. Most people will tell you that The Social Network is the better movie – and by all accounts, they’re right. The Social Network is one of those few films that are practically perfect. Fincher’s masterful direction naturalizes Sorkin’s dialogue and makes it work on an entirely new level. But, while I think The Social Network is an immaculate ‘technician’ of a film, I think Steve Jobs is much more of the ‘performer,’ which probably serves as a good representation of Zuckerberg and Jobs themselves. The impressionistic play-like format allows all of these characters a new sort of life. The arguments are practically Shakespearean. Where Bohemian Rhapsody assembles its movie like a Jenga tower, adding or removing ‘blocks’ of facts while trying to keep the larger piece balanced, Steve Jobs approaches its protagonist with an artistic focus, painting a portrait that isn’t entirely based in fact, and yet somehow conveys the fact better than strict details would.

TL;DR Steve Jobs is a super underrated movie and everyone should go watch it right now. Come back to the article later, this movie is better.

But, hold up. What about the accuracy question? If Bohemian Rhapsody was criticized for its inaccuracy, where does that leave Steve Jobs? How do we determine the quality of a biopic like this? First, we should look at what all of these movies are trying to do. Biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody and Tolkien are trying to depict a wider range of their protagonist’s lives, and while accuracy isn’t necessarily expected, it is definitely attempted. More stylistic movies like The Social Network and Steve Jobs, however, use their style to limit expectations and emphasize their themes. Think of something like Hamilton, the widely-celebrated historical rap musical. Apart from its immediately obvious combination of styles, the fact that its historically white characters are represented by an ethnically diverse cast gives a clear hint towards the themes of unity that Hamilton is playing towards. Rather than focus on individual details, the better biopics that I’ve seen spend their time building a broader sense of the person they are depicting. As I’ve said in my review, Tolkien is more about what Lord of the Rings is about than about the books themselves. The Social Network and Steve Jobs largely spend their run-time creating diverse, complicated views on their protagonists, utilizing a large cast with a lot of different perspectives.

While we're gushing about performances I also want to state that Andrew Garfield is brilliant and is going to get huge at any second now.

And more than anything else, these films work because they utilize their framing to its greatest potential. Tolkien reflects from the horrors of the Somme, grasping towards the ideals that made Tolkien the man he was. The Social Network has two depositions interrogating Zuckerberg, giving conflicting views as we grow to know the isolation and ambition of Eisenberg’s own portrayal. Steve Jobs’ expressionistic three-act structure reveal Jobs’ ongoing conflict with his peers, and with himself, as he learns and grows as a person through time. While Bohemian Rhapsody’s framing offers the opportunity to get into Mercury’s head, in the end, the movie doesn’t use its structure to its fullest extent. These are all movies about intensely creative and innovative people, and the structure and delivery of the movie should reflect that. Sorkin’s breakneck-paced dialogue reveals the intelligence of Zuckerberg and Jobs, while Fincher’s technical brilliance and Boyle’s expressive directing are able to further get into the characters’ heads. Karukoski uses a familiar structure, like Bohemian Rhapsody, but the film constantly reveals its creative flourish through its lighting and emphasis on art. All of them have a clear sense of structure, but use that structure as a vessel for the director's creativity, rather than as a block to it. Bohemian Rhapsody is entertaining, but never finds a way to really express itself or the genre-busting flamboyant nature of its protagonist. It sticks to a familiar structure, and never evolves beyond it. If these movies are attempting to capture the sense of a person, Bohemian Rhapsody not only fails to be accurate, it fails to really capture Freddie Mercury.

It is required for any actor portraying a musician to throw out their back for the role.

Interestingly enough, this weekend another musical biopic releases, also featuring a larger-than-life musician. Rocketman, staring Taron Egerton as Elton John, could easily go either way. It has been described by some of the cast as more of a musical than a movie, which is very intriguing, and the trailers are certainly alluding to a story that is willing to delve into the weird and expressionistic. It’s R-rated, and director Dexter Fletcher sounds more willing to delve into the depths of Elton John’s life than Bohemian Rhapsody was with Freddie Mercury. I have hopes, but it could wind up being every bit the entertaining-yet-generic film that Bohemian Rhapsody was. I look forward to hearing which side this movie falls on, and to see if this movie’s structure and framing lives up to the sort of creativity that Elton John provides us.

[1] https://www.noted.co.nz/culture/movies/bohemian-rhapsody-kiwi-anthony-mccarten-wrote-queen-movie/

[2] https://glendonrfrank.wixsite.com/franklyspeaking/post/tolkien-review-no-spoilers