It is still curious that the decline of superhero movies coincides with the rise of biopics, generally hagiographies inspired by the (exemplary) lives of 20th century popular culture icons. The list is long and varied: only in recent months have films about Enzo Ferrari been released (Ferarri), Priscilla Presley (Priscilla), Leonard Bernstein (Teacher), Samuel Beckett (Dance First) or Bob Marley (One Love). Oh, and in Spain too They know that (Eugenio). In many of these biopics There is a common element: the leading role is for the married life of these characters.
The bubble has not just burst and the lives of Amy Winehouse, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Candy Darling, Ana Mendieta and even Frank Sinatra himself await us, if the news that Martin Scorsese wants to make a film comes to fruition. about the singer, played by another blue-eyed star, Leonardo Di Caprio. In the shoes of Springsteen we will see Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) and in that of the Cuban artist Ana Mendieta there will be America Ferrara, whose thick feminist monologue in Barbie seems to have catapulted her to face as an actress and producer the life of a symbol like Mendieta in a series for Amazon.
It is obvious that the terrible death of the artist, who in 1985 fell into the void from her apartment on the 34th floor of a building in Greenwich Village, after a fight with her partner, the sculptor Carl Andre, turns her life into a kind of true crime cultured very much suited to this world, much more interested in the lives of the creators than in their work. His work with the body and the land, the fracture with his origin or his visionary ecofeminism are marginal, but the event of his death fits like a glove in the market trends.
But of all the characterizations of pop icons that haunt us, the one that is causing the most derision is that of Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan. If seeing Bradley Cooper with Leonard Bernstein’s exaggerated long-nosed profile bordered on dirty humor—you know, those imitations celebrities in the hands of comedian Joaquín Reyes—, Chalamet’s story can reach the status of a historical joke. Or at least that’s what it seems after the latest leak from the restless marketing team, a video from the shoot in which the actor and his co-star Monica Barbaro emulate Dylan and Joan Baez in the early sixties at the Newport folk festival.
Popular biographies of great people are not exactly new. In my grandparents’ time there was a lot of love for those by Stefan Zweig (from Erasmus of Rotterdam to Mary Stuart, Marie Antoinette and Balzac), but the current avalanche borders on the grotesque. With honorable exceptions (of young lincoln to Before Night Falls either The social network) the biopics of famous people are a poisoned gift for their interpreters. But also, the uninspiring string of recent times leaves in the air the question of, beyond the meme war, who these films are aimed at. Perhaps the answer also lies with Reyes, who every time he dresses up as a famous person shouts to the viewer his fetish word, “zanguango”, synonymous with stupid, lazy, lazy, lazy or drone.
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