Newsletters
I have been watching English movies in Istanbul's cinemas for the last two and a half years. Yesterday was the first time I saw the hall filled to almost 70% capacity. The audience included kids as well–something I didn’t see even in the case of a popular movie like Superman–despite the next day being a school day.
The movie was ‘Michael’. I’m sure the kids didn’t know much about the man the movie was about–Michael Jackson. The parents surely did and probably wanted to introduce their kids to the artist whose music influenced their lives at different stages.
I was a bit hesitant about watching the film because of the reviews it was receiving. But I couldn’t have missed a movie made about Michael Jackson, could I?
And the theater hall told me one thing.
Regardless of what the critics are saying about the movie–they are saying a lot, mostly bad stuff–the movie was set to be a blockbuster the day it was conceived. It crossed the $400 million mark in the second week and is still going strong across the world.
Because Michael Jackson was of the world.
The movie is pretty simple with a largely linear storyline. A young black boy from Gary, Indiana, plays music along with his four brothers, under the violent tutelage of their father, a former boxer and a steel-mill worker. The band comprising five of his sons is famously called the Jackson Five. Of the five, Michael is inarguably the most talented one: at eight years of age, he had the perfect pitch, flawless register, and immaculate runs and riffs. Of the five, he was the one most ruthlessly treated by his father.
Child actor Juliano Krue Valdi played the young Michael to perfection. The sequence where he is shown hiding in the bathroom, his small body convulsing as he sobs silently, cramped on the bathroom floor after receiving a particularly violent belt-whipping from his father, and the next moment he is singing his heart out, full of energy and emotion, not a trace left on his face or in his voice of the ordeal he went through, is a highlight of the movie. Valdi is exceptional in the range of emotions and expressions he portrays.
The grown-up Michael is played by Jaafar Jackson, Michael’s actual nephew, son of his elder brother, Jermaine Jackson. This phase of Michael’s life underlines his struggles to break away from familial bonds, which he holds very dear, but also craves to carve out his own niche.
What he wants the most, however, is to be free of his father’s never-ending tyranny.
His eventual wriggling out of that ruthless, ever-hungry, never-satiated chokehold is the high note, also the end note, of the movie.
While in pursuit of this objective, he achieves many a great musical milestone, breaks a few racial barriers, and endures injuries—both physical and mental. The movie ends soon after he announces his separation from the Jackson Five during a live concert. His brothers, although taken aback by the unexpected timing and nature of this announcement, support him wholeheartedly while their father looks on from backstage, mouth agape and all.
The movie, it feels, ends on an incomplete note, but it is clear that there’s going to be a second installment.
Critics are quite unhappy. They are calling the movie “hagiographical,” “overtly simple,” and “reverential.” They are angry that the now-deceased star, one of the biggest charity donors in the history of the U.S. entertainment industry and one who often donated anonymously, hasn’t been dragged through enough mud.
They are unforgiving that his body-image issues haven’t been discussed sufficiently; the issue of his cosmetic surgeries hasn’t been dissected in a manner that would have satisfied them.
Some are even offended at the absence of a child abuse accusation from the movie, although it captures his life before that period. Truth be told, the only child abusers we should be concerned about and focused on at this particular point in time are Jeffrey Epstein and his corrupt coterie of child molesters. Others can wait.
The film currently sits at 30-40% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The audience, however, are lapping it up. And that’s the people for whom the movie is made. I may be exaggerating here, but it is very likely that whosoever grew up in his era has at least some Michael Jackson association, or at least one Michael Jackson anecdote to share. His story is relatable across age groups, races, and religions. For instance, there were audible gasps in the hall as a young Michael was whipped by his father.
Similarly, he is an artist whose music transcends language barriers and is proudly owned by the people who grew up listening to his songs, many times without even understanding what he was saying (I was one of them growing up).
This perhaps explains the full theater hall. Why else would a Pakistani whose mother tongue isn’t English, sit in a cinema filled with a large number of people who take great pride in their mother tongue, Turkish—and are uniquely famous for not speaking English—to watch a movie about a singer whose entire portfolio consisted of English songs?
Decades after his death, Michael Jackson proves once again that he still lives on, that he can still pull huge crowds. The movie isn’t made for critics. It is made for Michael Jackson’s fans, and they are thronging the theaters to reaffirm their loyalty.
While I commend the restraint shown by my fellow moviegoers, the only thing I missed—which is very common in the part of the world I come from—was the audience cheering, hollering, whistling every time on-screen Michael did something noteworthy, or spontaneously breaking into an en masse dance whenever a ‘Thriller’ or a ‘Billie Jean’ played.
Set as preferred source
Set as preferred source
2 min read
