Come As You Are; The Truth Within The Fiction In Last Days And Rocketman

My last post got me thinking about reality, or rather its importance. I already had a topic in mind for this week's post, but I didn’t realise that this topic could relate back to the question I’ve been pondering: does a story mean more to us if it's true?

I myself place a lot of value on and get a lot of enjoyment from documentary films. Being captivated by an incredible story is a wonderful experience, and when this story is true, it can leave a lasting effect on us. However, does this truth and authenticity make films mean more? I don’t think so.

In 2005, Gus Van Sant gave us Last Days, starring Michael Pitt. If you have never seen this film, it is essentially the final days of a young rock star whose life has been taken over by drugs and their own personal mental struggles. Now, it's never said that the film's protagonist is Kurt Cobain. In fact, the protagonist is called Blake. Still, to fans and, well, basically anyone remotely familiar with the Nirvana frontman, it would be safe to assume that this character represents Kurt.

Pitt has mid-length shaggy blonde hair that covers his face for much of the film. He walks around the house in dresses and wears some of Kurt’s most iconic clothing, such as the black-and-red striped, Dennis the Menace-style jumper or the sunglasses. Pitt sings an original song, and both the song and how he sings it is Nirvana-esque. Anyone who stumbles across this film could be forgiven for thinking that it is a classic rock biopic, but it isn’t.

Fans tend to argue about if this film is good or bad based on whether it has accurate representation. Still, I think to read into this film too deeply and analyse its details for accuracy and relate everything to Kurt misses the point.

This film is not based on ‘fact’. I mean, how can it ever really be based on fact? We don’t have facts for this story. This is a fictionalised character and this film is simply an interpretation. Many say it is an interpretation of what happened in those final few days, but I see it as more of an interpretation of how somebody was feeling in the last few days of their life.

I think had Gus Van Sant attempted to make an accurate representation of Kurt’s final few days, it would have failed. Nobody knows what happened except for the people in that house and one of them is dead, so we will most likely never know. By using a fictional character and a fictional story, which are both possible representations of something real, Gus Van Sant can make suggestions and interpretation separate from real-life events and people. He gives himself more creative freedom. He does not have to stick to any rigid, ‘real’ story and so, if he deviates, he will not be berated for it. He and the story have freedom.

For me, this film says and does more than any rock biopic could have. For one, I feel biopics are trying to tell us every little detail of a person's life, to make it accurate and real. In a way, they are stiff and inflexible. They have to stick to telling a real story. I don’t think this film is trying to tell us anything. It is trying to make us feel something and it achieves that.

It is a difficult film and one that is hard to watch alone. It is heavy and dark. Its despondency is almost contagious and it is certainly all-consuming. This film creates such an intense atmosphere that you can feel it weighing on you. I want to say this film is oppressive, but I don’t mean that negatively. It is a great testament to the filmmaker that a film with little dialogue or narrative structure and painfully slow pacing can create such a feeling that the protagonist's feeling and mindset literally shift over to the viewer. I have never watched a film before that caused me to share the same headspace as the protagonist. It is an achievement, but also somewhat unnerving, the power that the film has.

Last Days is both true and it is fiction. Do I think it’s about Kurt Cobain? Yes. Does that really matter? I don’t think so. As I’ve said, how can we ever possibly know what happened in that house? Does this diminish the film's impact because it not ‘real’? I don’t think so. This film, clearly, means a lot to me. It has certainly stuck with me despite having watched it about nine years ago.

This may seem to be an odd and tenuous link, but, to me, Dexter Fletcher and Lee Hall’s 2019 hit Rocketman has a similar dilemma. This film is very clearly based on the real-life of singer-songwriter Elton John. The names aren’t changed. The life story is essentially the same, but there are elements that make is ‘less real’.

Elton John said that he didn’t want lead actor Taron Egerton to be too much like him. He wanted Egerton to place his own unique spin on the character and the story. Egerton also sings all of the songs, placing his own uniqueness in the tracks.

Rocketman does not really follow the typical biopic structure. It works more like a musical than a depiction of a life page-by-page, such as Walk the Line. The songs do not follow a chronological order; they enter into the film as needed to describe a certain feeling or moment in his life. We also know that Elton John didn’t write all of the lyrics to his songs, but they still have a place in his life and story. Isn’t that the gift and beauty of music: that we can feel that there are songs that are written just for us, that they were written about us?

Equally to Last Days, this film is interpretation. Yes, it is based more on realism - it clearly states who it's about -, but the actor and the film's format add a new and unique twist to the story. A young Elton John was not singing Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting in his local pub. That isn’t real, but does it mean any less to us? No, it doesn’t.

Both films affected me. One left me haunted by its beauty and intensity, and the other was simply a pure joy to watch, which can be a rarity in the current film world. Both of these films meant a lot to me, real or not.

Do you say, "I'm sorry, that I'm a rock & roll cliche?"