Get On Up is every Hollywood musical biopic. It toes the respectful, middlebrow line of Ray and Walk the Line, breezing through the ups and downs of James Brown's life, firing off some superficial observations about The Dark Side of Genius™, and ultimately bedding down in Brown's late-career deification.
It’s really easy to make this film. This film is the path of least resistance, dramatically-speaking. Every writer can scan a life and build a three-act structure out of it: the struggle to the top, the reign undermined by egomania or betrayal or addiction or violence or unpredictable tragedy, the bittersweet recognition after the dust has cleared. Anyone can turn someone else’s life into a bloodless blow-by-blow of personal milestones. Tate Taylor, the director previously responsible for the candy-coloured racism parable The Help, is just another anyone.
You couldn’t tell from the first 20 minutes, though. The script bounces about Brown’s life, action and cuts in time with the legend’s idiosyncratic funk beats: take the shellfire when Brown flies into Vietnam, acting as a drum setting the rhythm of the scene. Naturalism is ditched for big colours and bigger performances: take the warm white light and all-cream costuming of the church where Brown discovers gospel music. Even Brown, butterfly under the microscope, breaks the fourth wall with wise-ass asides. Taylor’s pushing himself and the film, and it’s breathless and vital and hyperkinetic.
In those 20 minutes, Get On Up is the harder film to make. It’s the film about the idea of the artist. It uses the form itself to convey the essence of the performer, their loves and their obsessions and their legacies. Any jumped-up hack in any medium can tell us what happened in James Brown’s life; for one-seventh of the film, Taylor uses the language he has that no-one else has, the language of the filmmaker, to try and tell us who Brown was, what he was about, and what he's come to mean.
I'm probably labouring this point, but to quote Matt Soller Zeitz's sermon from earlier this year: “Form is the means by which content is expressed.” It's the heart of the work. While Zeitz was preaching about film criticism, the same applies to filmmaking - the form is the thing that makes distinguishes your means of communication.
The first kind of biopic - the easy film to make - does nothing with that distinction. You get sets, nice lights and some good performers but you're not using the form to say anything. I mean, go watch Ray and tell me that film is good for any goddamn thing other than giving Jamie Foxx an Oscar. It lets you into Charles’ life and mind about as well as his Wikipedia article.
The second kind of biopic-the hard film-unlocks that life and mind, digs in and tries to communicate, as an experience, the life and genius of the artist. It filters every shot, every cut, every design choice through that vision. That's the likes of 24 Hour Party People, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Storys and I'm Not There.
Get On Up starts like that, and though it settles into a conventional Wiki-groove, it occasionally lets that adrenaline rush back in. When Brown outlines his plans for breaking open Chicago's promotion industry, he tells us, delivering the same monologue from two different locations, Taylor cutting between them mid-sentence to show us how effortlessly brilliant Brown could be.
Later, during the Paris leg of his legendary 1971 Love Power Peace tour, Brown walks and talks us through the performance at the same time as he (well, a second “he”) performs on stage. It's a sweaty, exhilarating single take that ends with a small bravura moment as Brown replaces the second “Brown”, who was in the frame mere seconds before, at the microphone. In fits and starts, Get On Up reminds us of what it could've been before structure and biography set in.
That's not saying Get On Up is dull or inherently worthless. Just that, as with Ray or Walk the Line, its ultimate value lies in its leads. Here, Chadwick Boseman is pretty much as phenomenal as Brown. He's an electric and seductive presence: he moves with a supremely self-assured swagger and there's a devil in his eyes that's five steps ahead of everyone. Boseman embodies Mr Dynamite, a man more than himself, and Boseman filters Brown's anger and pain through that same physical and emotional identity. He's backed by a capable ensemble, but Boseman's the show, and he adds shade where the director can't, or won't.
During an early rehearsal, a young Brown tells the Famous Flames that the conventional restrictions of music don't matter “when you got that feel”; it's the feel that keeps music honest, real, alive. Get On Up does its best to channel that feel, but Tate Taylor is less James Brown and more Maceo Parker, the traditionalist sax-man (played by Craig Robinson) who follows Brown's lead but doesn't understand it. Taylor's too caught in the old ways, and his lack of audacity leaves Get On Up easy, another Hollywood musical biopic.
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