2004: Year of the biopic
by Ryan Good
the Carillon

As January rolls in, it is expected that we in the film community (either paid or just nerdy) define the past year in cinema. If possible, in such a way which assures the general public that although they only saw 30 films this year, the ones they missed were pretty much more of the same. Here goes.

The consensus this year: it was a good year to be an interesting person. More than any other year, 2004 was littered with biopics that (despite what historians say) told us the true story of those important people that helped shape our culture. The year’s biopics started off on an inauspicious note with the releases of Against the Ropes and Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius. The first starred Meg Ryan as the most successful female boxing promoter ever (name her ... I’ll give you $50) and the latter starred Jim Caviezel as the famed golfer. Neither fared very well and both disappeared into the darkened realm of obscurity.

Luckily for Caviezel he had already made us sit up and cringe as Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ. In 2004 many directors followed Mel’s lead and managed to make films based not on the entire life of a real person but on a single event in a real persons life.

Before the year was out Johnny Depp was J.M. Barrie trying to find Neverland (and succeeding). Mario Van Peebles played his own father in Baadasssss! We even saw a young idealistic Che Guevera in The Motorcycle Diaries. Don Cheadle plays the ‘Rwandan Schindler’ Paul Rusesabagina in >Hotel Rwanda. Even Sean Penn got into the act playing Samuel Bicke, one of the many people who wanted to kill Richard Nixon in the aptly titled The Assassination of Richard Nixon.

In film after film, these directors proved that you could encapsulate the spirit of a famous person by examining only a single incident in their lives. Despite these successes, some filmmakers decided to do it “the hard way” and cover all or at least a large portion of a person’s life in just under three hours.

For example there is De-Lovely, Kevin Kline’s bisexual musical romp through the life of composer Cole Porter. We saw even more piano playing as Jamie Foxx strapped on the black shades and played Ray Charles in Ray. Next came Hollywood’s big budget biopic, the ambiguously bisexual Alexander in which Colin Farrell played the benevolent tyrant (not an oxymoron!) who conquered most of the world before he was 30 and in a shade under three hours. Is that all?

Who else could Hollywood immortalize? How about famed sex doctor Alfred Kinsey played by Liam Neeson in Kinsey. Then Kevin Spacey doing a bang up Bobby Darin impression in Beyond The Sea (you know he did his own singing?).

Even cable TV wasn’t left out of the biopic fiesta. HBO picked up Geoffrey Rush in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers after theatre distributors asked “Who’s Peter Sellers?” However the year in biopics didn’t officially come to a close until the release of Martin Scorsese’s 4th career biopic (moving him past Milos Forman for 2nd all-time behind Oliver Stone). The Aviator stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the nutty-as-a-fruit-cake billionaire Howard Hughes. The most widely successful biopic of the year it seems destined to garner the remaining few Oscar nominations not given to Jamie Foxx.

In the end 2004 proved unequivocally that people want to see famous people act like other famous people. They prefer artists and entertainers, but sometimes just good-hearted individuals or sons of God are enough.