Robbie Williams is very funny. His humour is quick, unrehearsed, alternatively boastful and self deprecating, and to use an old word, “saucy.” As depicted in “Better Man” (Sina Studios), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, his life is anything but funny. But he comes across as a man uncommonly easy to like and for whom one can have a great deal of compassion.
How to make a film about someone known, public, familiar? What director Michael Gracey decided to do was to use the name of one of his previous movies, “The Greatest Showman”, as the hook on which to hang the entire premise of his new film. The movie establishes this theme in the first seconds, opening with the song “Let me entertain you.” This strategy is for the most part very successful and occasionally utterly dazzling.
The story is divided into three acts and told chronologically, without flashbacks. In brief: at age 15 he successfully applies for a job in a phenomenally successful boy band, Take That; but then for reasons of jealousy, unpredictability and addiction he is forced out. After a few false starts he starts out on his own as a solo artist, but descends quickly into intractable depression, worsening addiction and attempted suicide. He receives treatment and returns to entertaining. In the film, the middle act is by far the longest.
I felt that the emotional high point of the movie came at the point where Take That has just been awarded a record deal. The five “boys” sing the song “Rock DJ” and as they do, they dance down London’s Regent Street, starting at Hamley’s famous toy store. They light up the street with their energy; sheer happiness sucking in more and more performers as they go. The choreography is so exceptional it is worthy of repeated watching. I was enchanted: 5 minutes of toe tapping, laughing out loud and bopping in my seat before an unusually strong feeling of satisfaction settled into me, absolutely joyful that such a complicated set piece could be pulled off with such panache. It reminded me of the work of Lin-Manuel Miranda, notably in the movie “In the Heights.” This movie uses a similar technique in the streets of Upper Manhattan, New York.
Robbie Williams understands that he is playing a part: his audience knows who he is supposed to be. The conceit of the film is that he is represented throughout by a computer generated image of a monkey. He appears as a mask to the audience in front of him.
But the film, of course, has another audience which watches from a position of detachment, as silent observer to the performance: those of us in the cinema. While watching the entertainment unfold as the masked monkey delights his concert audience, we see the whole picture: the performing animal has been kept at a zoo for their benefit. Having bought tickets to go and feed the monkey and clap at his tricks at the prescribed right moments, they get to return to their homes safe and sound. We can see that he remains behind bars at the zoo.
One really clever scene illustrates this duality of the two audiences very well. The setup is an interview with Michael Parkinson during the worst part of his illness. Williams is asked the usual obvious questions and the mask answers. He plays the fool, at one point jumping onto his host’s knee, and says more and more outrageous things. But between answers in the tv studio, the movie director’s camera cuts to scenes from the hard reality of his life, dangerously falling apart in every direction.
The three critical familial relationships with his mum, dad and nan convincingly shed some light on his working class upbringing. He is not the only musically minded small child to be bullied at school for not being able to save goals in the playground. Later, class snobbery becomes transparent as his middle class manager sneers at him – he could easily be replaced by another “scally with ratty hair from Stoke-on-Trent.” Before leaving Williams and his mum to develop a career as a cabaret performer for small clubs, his dad has taught him valuable lessons about performance and holding an audience, “you have him learned from the best.” Neither of his parents are concerned about his poor exam results. In their separate ways they realise that exceptional musical talent is not reliant on academic success. They see in him what this film forces us to see too: extraordinary skill oozing with ambition but tempered with buckets of charm.
Walking home from the Playhouse after the movie, I wondered about boarding a train from Montrose to London and finding myself in a seat next to Robbie Williams. How much more interesting to meet him now, in the third act, the great entertainer as his unmasked self.
Adam Poole
15 January 2025
