The success of recent biopics of contemporaries like Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan begs the question: Why haven’t the Beatles received a similarly splashy big-screen treatment? The answers, surely, are myriad. For one, their story’s canvas may simply be too vast for a single film, which is why director Sam Mendes is reportedly working on a four-film omnibus, each movie dramatizing the life of a single Beatle.
Another reason is that the owners of the Beatles songbook have been notoriously stingy—and cost-prohibitive—when it comes to authorizing usage rights in movies. And so films that mine elements of the Beatles’ story, such as “Midas Man” (opening in theaters Friday), have to make do without any original Beatles music, leaving a chasm in the soundtrack that can only be filled by a whiz-bang script, direction and performances.
“Midas Man” splits the difference, excelling in parts while cutting corners, both narratively and financially, in others. The man of the title is Brian Epstein (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), a record store owner from a prominent Jewish family who essentially discovers the Beatles in Liverpool’s legendary Cavern Club in 1961 and goes on to become their manager and a creative magus behind their careers.
The scenes in the predawn of Beatlemania are among the film’s most effective, because we get to see the inchoate Fab Four play; they were a cover band at the time, so rights issues are not a problem. The flawlessly cast actor-musicians exude the rickety energy of a burgeoning sound while clad in black leather jackets. Backstage, they’re uncouth—smoking, boozing, belching, and not entirely convinced that the square classical music buff in the bespoke suit and with no managerial experience can really rocket them to fame. In a particularly deft formal touch, director Joe Stephenson expands the frame from a cramped 1:85:1 aspect ratio to a widescreen format after Epstein’s first encounter with the Beatles, subtly suggesting that his job, and his life, are about to blow up.
Stephenson, from a screenplay by Brigit Grant and Jonathan Wakeham, convinces us that, as its title suggests, Epstein knew how to alchemize sonic metal into gold. He clearly had a keen ear for popular predilections and a vision to shape the unkempt Mersey Beat sound for a global audience. But as Epstein works onscreen as the Svengali of a revolutionary sound, behind the scenes Stephenson grows largely content to hem the movie into familiar structures, playing up the mythos around the band in biopic-ese. As Epstein scrabbles for a record deal, the script allows us, with the benefit of hindsight, to chortle at the small-minded bean counters in the music industry. “Groups with guitars are on their way out,” dismisses a Decca executive in a literal smoke-filled room.
Occasionally, Stephenson employs the device of Epstein directly addressing the camera as a sort of confessor, a nifty disruption from the conventional narrative until it becomes something lazier. When Epstein confides to us about the Beatles’ notorious 1966 appearance in the Philippines, in which their nonattendance at a social engagement hosted by Imelda Marcos led to a dramatic confrontation with the state regime, Stephenson commits a cardinal sin of storytelling: He tells us instead of shows us.
The film’s exploration of Epstein’s tortured personal life is hardly more convincing. Epstein was a closeted gay man, a secret revealed in reductive scenes of furtive encounters with shady partners in the dead of night, the threat of nightstick-wielding policemen ever-present—in other words, the “Bohemian Rhapsody” shorthand.
Better insights arise in the relationship Epstein develops with unemployed American actor Tex Ellington (Ed Speleers), whom the manager eventually brings home to Mom (Emily Watson). In this winningly uncomfortable scene, Watson marvelously exhibits passive contempt at her son’s new plaything, while Speleers conveys Tex’s understandable bitterness at being judged for his sexuality, for his middling career, for leeching off her son’s largesse. As they did in countless households, sensibilities, generations and prejudices collide amid changing social mores. The movie could have benefited from more moments like this.
As for the beautifully cast Beatles themselves, they’re portrayed as little more than perennial jokers, always prepared with fresh bon mots. Stephenson leaves their genius on the table for another director to analyze, to say nothing of the iconic moments in their career.
The Beatles’ debut on American television on “The Ed Sullivan Show” is emblematic of “Midas Man”’s failings. Sullivan is played by Jay Leno, in a bit of stunt casting that seems clever on paper—a TV host honoring his predecessor—but it doesn’t really work, because we only see Leno in the role. And then, after re-creating Sullivan’s black-and-white gesticulations in introducing the band, we’re denied the pleasure of seeing the performance, because, of course, the movie doesn’t have the rights to the music. So it goes with this underbaked project. Whether it’s the protagonist’s sex life or the Beatles’ extraordinary career, just when it heats up, it cuts away.
“Midas Man” opens Friday, March 21 at Movies of Delray and Movies of Lake Worth.
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