The iconic singer displays refreshing candour in his formally daring cinematic portrait, which delves into the more unsavoury elements of his past. By Yasmin Omar
In the video for his seminal 2000 pop banger ‘Rock DJ’, Robbie Williams strips himself bare. He throws off his singlet and steps out of his jeans to reveal tight, tiger-printed Y-fronts; after a few moments of thrusting and bicep-flexing, he takes them off as well. Full-frontal nudity would seem like the logical endpoint of any striptease (Take That’s jelly-smeared buttocks serve as the final frames of their 1991 ‘Do What You Like’ video), but Williams is a solo artist now, and dammit he has something to say. His initially stricken expression settles into determination as he rips off his skin, tears into his blood-glistening muscles and pelts hunks of meat at the blank-faced women rollerskating around him, who feast on it carnivorously. By the end of the song, he is nothing more than a dancing skeleton.
It’s an expected, yet still powerful, image of how the British public, and our scabrous tabloid media, demand their pound of Williams’ flesh. A completely unexpected image – though admittedly deriving from that same fame-shunning impulse – underpins his musical biopic Better Man. In the film, the rockstar is played by a computer-generated chimp. One more time: a computer-generated chimp.
The strange creative decision, according to director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman, 2017), arose from Williams feeling like a performing monkey. A brief line in the movie to explain this wouldn’t go amiss, but honestly the conceit mostly works. Devised by Weta FX, the pioneering digital-effects company behind the Avatar movies (2009–), the primate has the body of actor Jonno Davies, combined with the singing voice and limpid grey eyes of Williams himself. Seeing a monkey prancing around on stage in red PVC shorts, or suited and bowtied for an audition, elevates the material, as did the blocky G-string-wearing, weed-smoking LEGO figurines that populate Pharrell Williams’ formally unusual documentary Piece by Piece (2024).
The comparison must end there, since only one of these two Williams is forthcoming. And it’s not Pharrell. (Note that 2013’s ‘Blurred Lines’, The Guardian’s ‘most controversial song of the decade’, plays without comment in Piece by Piece.) Robbie’s persona, by contrast, is all about transparency. For last year’s self-titled Netflix docuseries, the singer conducted his master interview in his Versace boxers in bed; during Covid lockdowns, he spent many confessional hours answering Instagram Live questions (‘My favourite thing about the Eighties? Having no idea that I was an alcoholic’). Williams is therefore a worthwhile subject for the biopic treatment: he’s willing to dive headfirst into his substance-abuse issues and bratty behaviour, his depression and suicidal ideation. Better Man doesn’t feel as guarded, as micromanaged, as other films of its ilk.
Better Man (2024)
The voiceover, delivered by Williams with signature cheeky-chappy flair, immediately sets the tone. ‘Who is Robbie Williams?’ he ponders, existentially, before undercutting any pretentiousness by admitting ‘I’ve been called a narcissistic, punchable, shit-eating twat’. His colourful asides are very funny, largely because they reject the tiptoeing sanctimony of biopic narration. Robbie delights in settling scores, calling out people who’ve wronged him. ‘[Take That manager] Nigel Martin Smith was, for legal reasons, a sweetheart… and an absolute c*nt.’
The swaggering bravado aims to conceal a bruise that Better Man is constantly pressing on: Robbie’s bone-deep insecurity. Watch any Robbie Williams live performance and you’ll invariably see him cupping a hand to his ear, imploring louder applause. In the film, Robbie treats his record-breaking career as a means of securing the validation he never received from his absent, caravan-club-crooner father (Steve Pemberton) and the band manager (Damon Herriman) who plucked him from obscurity at 16, then threatened to shove him right back if he strayed above his station.
Better Man (2024)
Better Man does follow the typical genre storybeats, gliding through its subject’s most dramatic moments from 1982 up until the new millenn-eee-um. There’s the traditionalist record-label boss behind a mahogany desk who just doesn’t get it, man. There’s the overeager manager confidently, threateningly, warning that said boss is making a huge mistake by passing on the Next Big Thing. There’s the meteoric rise, the crushing fall and the hard-won second rise. The thing people forget about cliché is that it is a fitting way to describe something – it’s just grown stale through overuse. The dizzying blur of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll recurs again and again in music biopics because – guess what? – it recurs again and again in the music industry.
Better Man (2024)
Thankfully, there are a handful of trope subversions to keep us engaged. We are spared the euphoric recording-booth realisation that a history-making hit is being made, one instrument at a time. An early Take That studio session instead proves emotionally draining for Robbie. Withering in the imposed darkness of lead singer-songwriter Gary Barlow’s shadow, he’s faced with Nigel laughing at him as he belts out his verse, and clocks the manager’s relief when Gary lays down his ‘superior’ vocals. Much like the BBC’s Boybands Forever (2024) docuseries – in which a talking-head Williams graciously recognises his good fortune, while criticising institutional exploitation – Better Man carefully weighs the psychological damage inflicted upon the young men fed into the ravenous maw of the entertainment industry.
Better Man (2024)
The film’s narrative predictability is excused when the music starts. For those of us who came of age in the UK in the Noughties, hearing the opening piano chords of ‘Feel’ (2002), or the heralding electric-guitar riff of ‘Let Me Entertain You’ (1997), is the sonic equivalent of Proust’s madeleine. It jolts you back to carefree childhood evenings watching Top of the Pops. Williams’ discography is lovingly stitched into the very fabric of Better Man, which slips into a magical-realist fantasy for its musical interludes.
When Robbie meets his soon-to-be fiancée, All Saints’ Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno), dozens of shooting stars cascade from the night sky as they waltz across the bow of a party boat, dueting ‘She’s the One’ (1999). In a clever stroke of economic storytelling, Gracey wraps the early days of their romance into a montage during the song, cutting between their future problems and present happiness. Ashley Wallen’s whirling, acrobatic choreography is similarly considered, neatly mapping onto the lyrics (Robbie holds Nicole high in the air and she throws out her limbs at the words ‘You’ll be so high you’ll be flying’.)
Better Man (2024)
‘Come Undone’ (2002), which arrives at a crisis point, is another standout sequence. Robbie is submerged in an ice-topped lake, pounding at its thick, white skin while agitated fans and camera-toting paparazzi claw at him. The jukebox musical’s pinnacle, though, is undoubtedly ‘Rock DJ’. It’s exuberant, it’s life-affirming, it’s a whirligig of energy. The Take That boys – costume-changing every few seconds – skip, run and pogo-stick down Regent Street, headstanding on grand pianos and gyrating on mobility scooters. It culminates in a flash mob that pulls pedestrians into the band’s joy. Gracey clearly has an eye for musical set-pieces, staging and executing numbers that both enrapture audiences and push the story forward.
Midway through Better Man, Robbie’s writing partner Guy Chambers remarks that ‘a song only works if it costs you something’. Williams appears to have taken that message to heart with this movie, which shows the performer quite literally fighting his demons. The artist’s executive-producer credit – which can strangle creativity for the sake of brand management – does not seem to have negatively affected it. The cocaine and vomit and semen of his bad decisions have been trodden into the film’s worn carpet. It’s an appropriate portrait of the rockstar: rough around the edges, with a patchworked together heart.
WATCH BETTER MAN IN CINEMAS
