We’re just a few minutes into Better Man when the eight-year-old Robert Williams — very much played by a CG chimp — is abandoned by his father. Williams steps out onto the streets of Stoke-on-Trent singing ‘Feel’, a song from the popstar he will later become. And despite none of that making sense on paper, your heart shatters. His shoulders slump and his green, glassy, watery eyes plead for protection as the strings swell. “I just wanna feel real love, feel the home that I live in,” he sings. It’s hard not to love him.
As Michael Gracey’s film relays with unapologetic sincerity and unashamed bombast, Williams’ formative experiences define and drive him. His fractured relationship with his self-absorbed, showbiz-obsessed father, his idol, who leaves his son and wife in search of fame, means that he will spend forever looking for affirmation. Meanwhile, becoming a boyband idol himself at 16 and spending the next few years in a state of sozzled arrested-development further slow his maturity, regardless of all the extremely mature situations he finds himself in. And it is testament to Gracey’s delicate guiding hand that we feel for Williams – at least in the guise of this people-pleasing primate – from the start. Our own life experiences might be a world away from his, but Better Man’s preoccupations are universal: the need to be loved, to feel safe, secure, to not be taken advantage of. Does that insecure little kid inside of us ever truly, completely grow up?
The story here is told from Williams’ perspective, and it’s a carnival of self-loathing. Williams has been called many things, he himself confesses at the start via narration, including “narcissistic, punchable, shit-eating twat” – and while he doesn’t argue with any of that, he tells us that this film is about how he sees himself. Enter the chimp.
Through it all, Gracey’s take on Williams never loses us, and that is in large part due to the simian-shaped lead
That narration, which Williams continues throughout, is largely based on candid interviews Williams recorded with his friend Gracey over a year-and-a-half; much of what we hear, in fact, is audio from those interviews, conducted before they even thought of developing the material into a film, which explains why it all feels so unfiltered. Yes, this is a full-blown musical extravaganza from the director of The Greatest Showman, bubbling with sweeping grandeur, but there’s not a second that doesn’t feel like some deep truth is being expunged: it’s hard to think of another music biopic as apparently honest and heartfelt as this. Having told Gracey that, during his time with Take That, Williams often felt like he was being dragged onto the stage to perform like a monkey, Gracey takes that image and runs with it. It’s a huge risk, of course – one big bucket of WTF – but not only does it pay off, it elevates everything we see on screen, making it all both heightened and, somehow, more relatable. What a heist.
Shitty dad (Steve Pemberton) aside, the young ape (for which on screen there is no narrative explanation, no context, he just is an ape) has a supportive family – a loving mother (Kate Mulvany) and doting grandmother (Alison Steadman). Getting through an audition for Take That by way of sheer cockiness, Williams finds himself playing second fiddle not only to songwriter Gary Barlow (Jake Simmance, getting the young Barlow’s sanctimonious superiority complex just right) but manager Nigel Martin-Smith (Damon Herriman, an actor who looks so intrinsically evil he played Charles Manson twice, in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and David Fincher’s Mindhunter), who blesses Robert with a new scamp moniker, ‘Robbie’, and is generally unkind to him, seemingly intent on dismantling his self-confidence.
Williams, though, has his own demons to contend with, and that’s what Gracey explores so startlingly. In time, the chimp will have a monkey on his back, yes, but more problematic are the ones inside his head, criticising and deriding him, telling him he’s useless, pathetic, a fraud, which isn’t unrelated to Williams’ dad instilling in him that the very worst thing in life is to be a nobody: in other words, someone who isn’t an entertainer. Someone who isn’t adored by strangers.
The demons become increasingly vicious as Williams becomes even more famous, and as they do, Gracey goes for broke with his big bag of tricks. A montage taking in Williams’ double-edged success as it reaches its apex feels like an assault, and it’s intentionally bewildering; the editing itself seems coked up. And as the exterior manifestations of Williams’ interior chimps become more aggressively vocal, sequences get more surreal, and at one point really quite shockingly violent, certainly for a music biopic: it’s not rated 15 for nothing, and kudos to all involved for not softening edges to get more bums on seats.
Through it all, Gracey’s take on Williams never loses us, and that is in large part due to the simian-shaped lead, played via performance-capture by Jonno Davies, mimicking Williams’ mannerisms to a tee while Wētā FX layers its digital monkey-magic on top of it all (Davies provides Williams’ speaking voice; Williams himself does the singing). You feel protective of him, cautious of him, this proto-human running on pure instinct, this confused chimp lashing out in the limelight, sometimes frightened, sometimes feral. The conceit works wonders: it looks like a chimp that looks (a bit) like Robbie Williams, but the little animalistic physical touches make him feel like enough of an actual animal that we care for him considerably more than we would if he were a human lookalike.
There’s an upsetting sequence in which Williams, chosen to record the lead vocals for Take That’s ‘Relight My Fire’, gives it his all in the vocal booth, while Martin-Smith and Barlow, behind glass at the mixing desk, look dismayed. With their mics off, the isolated ape can’t hear what they’re saying, but he can feel it, and his primal snarls, his angry nose wrinkling, his furious breathing make him feel like he’s being mistreated to a much greater extent. Making the character non-human imbues him with greater levels of humanity, and if the film is guilty of exploiting our sentimental love of animals, then so be it. During the period in which Williams is dating All Saints’ soon-to-be long-suffering Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno, nailing the peculiar transatlantic tones), there’s a moment in which he, home from another messy bout of nihilism, is lying on her lap on a sofa, she stroking his head as he dabs cocaine, and you barely register that this is a human woman playing Nicole Appleton and a CG chimp playing Robbie Williams. More significantly, you care for them. This is no mean feat!
Despite its darkness, the whole film is cheeky, consistently undercutting itself, taking the piss, upending expectations.
The chimp, though, is so effective that a couple of supporting characters suffer in comparison. A strand involving Williams’ best friend feels like it’s barely survived the cutting-room floor. More problematic is Williams’ dad, Peter: Pemberton does good work playing up the man’s panto showmanship, which is interesting in itself, but as far as this film’s concerned, that’s all there is to him. Painted in broad strokes, he’s just nowhere near as fleshed-out – nowhere near as, well, human as the chimp is. Considering that Williams’ relationship with him is the big throughline, it’s a bit of a setback, but it hits home nonetheless, sweet and sad as it is.
Further emotional heavy-lifting comes from the way Gracey deploys Williams’ songs: like the opening ‘Feel’, they are recontextualised, used so powerfully that it’s as if they were written for the film – like they’ve finally found their true purpose. ‘Angels’, for years a staple number at funerals, is now reclaimed for one here, a cluster of mournful black umbrellas softly subverting genre trappings. ‘Let Me Entertain You’, recreated from Williams’ 2003 Knebworth stint, begins, chimp aside, as it did in reality, but ends up rather far from reality, as an apocalyptic reckoning in which even that 15 certification is tested. ‘Rock DJ’, meanwhile, involving hundreds of dancers on London’s Regent Street, soundtracks Take That’s successful breakthrough, and is on a mission to be the most exuberant, most feelgood musical sequence ever. A cheeky, hormonal, joyful showstopper, it’s really quite breathtaking.
Despite its darkness, the whole film is cheeky, consistently undercutting itself, taking the piss, upending expectations. Even with familiar beats – the rise to fame, the dreaded comedown, the life-threatening addictions – it never feels rote, fully swerving the curse of Walk Hard, leaving other music biopics for dust. A furious argument scene is underpinned by something very strange going on with a weird wetsuit. There is some sort of absurdity in almost every scene, above and beyond the chimp of it all. Let alone the appearances from (actors playing) Liam and Noel Gallagher, probably the funniest bit-parts of the year.
From start to finish, though, beats that huge heart. Gracey never forgets where he’s going, with cinematography (courtesy of Erik Wilson, who’s worked on all the Paddington films) that supports this wounded little ape, props him up, even when he’s his own worst enemy. There is great tenderness and sensitivity here. And a bleach-blond chimp in a red Adidas tracksuit. It’s a heady concoction.
