The story of Stuart Shorter (Tom Hardy), as told through his friend, writer Alexander Masters (Benedict Cumberbatch), is a perfect fit for this biopic format. Stuart: A Life Backwards, a single drama biopic from HBO and BBC, is thankfully not one of those films. It’s closer in spirit to Star 80 and Gia a quasi-documentary where the story is played straight in some segments, while other scenes are conducted like interviews, allowing the supporting characters to muse about their relationships with the central figure. A kindly writer who befriends a mentally ill homeless man? No, wait: a kindly writer who befriends a mentally homeless man who is already dead at the beginning of the film, so we, the audience, can see via flashback how that poor soul was too pure for this world? Sounds suspiciously like that one film starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. Stuart: A Life Backwards, on its surface, seems like such a film.
Occasionally, there are biopics that transcend their trappings based on the sheer virtuoso of their actors ( Frances, La Vie En Rose). More often than not, you can count the mechanical beats and see the pinwheels in the actors’ eyes, all vying for as many awards they can fit on their mantles.
This is all well and good, but it makes so many these films colorless affairs.
All the messiness of life, all its unpredictability and rough edges, are frequently filled away in favor of showy performances and some sort of message (life is precious, drugs are bad, mental illness sucks, society just doesn’t understand you, etc). Ah, the biopic, one of the most dependably square film/TV genres in existence.