#which i think helps it to escape a bit of the artifice that wicked had

[pynkhues]

I liked Wicked I really did but my thought half way through Better Man was that Better Man is a superior musical and the best Musical I have seen of the year. It does hit the usual beats of a biopics but I didnt mind it because with some very creative direction, choreo, music arrangement etc. It took those beats and made it not to sound corny but about the 'truth' of those moments, not just a series of facts presented as images in a fast transition.

I heard that they decided to use a monkey because they felt it was harder to make a monkey taking cocaine look glamorous and i think they were really cooking with this idea. A cgi monkey as lead character allowed them to really play with how they represented moments and feelings in his story.

Without a doubt one of my faves this year, was really a 'this is why i go to the cinema' moment. I hope that it gets regonized refreshing the genre a bit. I'd love for creative risks to be rewarded esp. when executed so well.

Actually I had an idea that it was going to be good and I was going to like it just because it's the first time in ages a biopic tries something different but i for some reason didnt clock it was going to be a musical and did not expect it to be executed so well.

Hope it inspires future biopics to mess with the forumal a bit, time, space, presentation and so on. No need to reinvent the wheel but some sincerity counts for a lot.

(x)

I liked Wicked too, but actually had the same thought about halfway through Better Man that it was a better musical. I wonder if it is because Wicked carries so much history with it as a show in and of itself, but then, for a lot of people, Robbie Williams does too, and yet this film just felt so fresh and mmm, I guess the word I'd use is raw? Sincere is definitely a good one too though, anon.

The monkey works on so many levels - I'd read that interview too where the director talked about it being more confronting for an audience to watch a chimp snort lines of coke than a man, and I've seen him talk too about Robbie having seen himself as a performing monkey, and the metaphor for addiction as being the monkey-on-his-back, so it feels like it's been really thought-out as a creative decision. I also love what The LA Times critic said about him being a monkey making her feel both protective of him and cautious of him, because I think that's really true too. His otherness as the only animal is only seen by himself and us as the audience, but it really lends itself both to his naked vulnerability and his unpredictability and destructiveness. It's really good, creative filmmaking, and I feel like it's going to be ripe for film analysis long into the future.

And I hope it gets rewarded too! I feel like it should at least get some VFX noms, but I'd love it to get some recognition in editing and cinematography at the very least too, because I think some of the work there was astonishing (that sequence when he drives his car into the water in Come Undone where the electric eels become paparazzi camera flashes is honestly brilliant visual storytelling).

It's so inventive and such a risk that I'm so thrilled Paramount was willing to back, and I really hope it opens up the genre too.