St. Michael’s World Conquest

Heading over to catch the new King of Pop biopic, Michael, we are prone to have a skeptical attitude, similar to watching the film Melania, another highly public figure hitting the big screen this year. A pesky question dogs us: How much truth-telling are we in for? 

In both cases, the answer is “not much.” Melania was a trumped-up vanity piece of engine pop, Michael is an often musically inspiring portrait of the artist, but which unforgivably avoids any mention of his (alleged, let’s say, for legality’s sake) pedophile escapades and dark side. 

As this film reminds us, Jackson was fond of bringing unusual pets into the house, including his chimp Bubbles, a llama, and an actual giraffe, right there on the Jackson compound in Encino. But there is also a major elephant in the room of this insider job and puff piece-ish biopic.  

Michael’s central dramatic gambit relies on a strongly black-and-white, hero-and-villain scenario. Stage father Joseph Jackson = bad (and not in the Michael Jackson definition of “bad”), Michael = unassailably good, worthy of his self-crowned “King of Pop” moniker. In a way, the film is revenge against the sins of the father, with no hint of the monstrous sins of the son. 

We follow the story from the tender days when the family lived in Gary, Indiana, with Joseph (Colman Domingo, so very good at being bad here) cracking the whip and wielding the belt to get the results he wanted from his boys in the band. We watch the rise through Motown to L.A. — and the family’s rambling compound in Encino — and through to Michael’s breakaway into an inevitable solo career, with the help of Quincy Jones.

Despite the nagging whitewashing quality of the film, there is plenty to admire and sink one’s eyes and ears into. Michael’s surrogate, Jaafar Jackson — son of Jermaine Jackson — is stunningly fine in the lead role, with the necessary trifecta of talents, as singer, dancer, and actor — although this role doesn’t require him to move beyond the innately repressed emotional range of the real Michael. 

Director Antoine Fuqua, previously known for work in the action genre and the powerful Denzel Washington vehicle, Training Day, stages numerous enthralling music sequences, including one fascinating dive into the creative process leading up to Thriller. In-studio scenes of Jackson tracking his vocal parts, with only his ripe, naked voice audible, are moving to those listening in the booth and us in the theater. In its brightest moments, Michael contains some of the big-screen musical vitality of the potent new EPiC: Elvis in Concert. 

Through the music-powered segments, our belief in the true might of Jackson’s artistic gift is confirmed, on riveting settings of songs including the disarmingly moving rat tribute “Ben,” “Wanna Be Starting Something,” “Billie Jean” and, natch, “Thriller.” The adage rings true: look at the art, not the artist. But is that really possible when pedophilia is part of the picture? Can we listen to his music purely anymore? Can we appreciate Woody Allen’s genius in the same way, after what we know about his real-life misdeeds?

This slice of Jacksonian life culminates in 1988, as he has taken command of his destiny and sings — and, with powerful charisma and control — the self-trumpeting “Bad” to the masses at Wembley Stadium. It’s a triumphant moment. But we know the rest of the story, which may be told on screen someday, in a feature film setting, rather than the damning documentary evidence presented in the HBO doc Leaving Neverland.

Speaking of Neverland, we in the 805 may have a personal and privileged interest in Jackson, whose long residence in his Neverland compound near Los Olivos made him our county’s most famous music superstar — a local artist, if you will. With some slightly perverse fascination, we watched as he was driven to and from the sheriff’s office by the dump, through his trial in Santa Maria, and the famous perp drive from Neverland to his juried verdict date, similar to the white Bronco ride of OJ. (See Matt Kettmann’s obit and summation of his coverage of the Michael trial/trials here). 

And we coveted news of local sightings, as when he went into a market in his adopted hometown of Los Olivos and asked: “Why don’t you have any fast food places in this town?”

Unconfirmed rumors have it that a sequel option is open for a “rest of the story” addition to Michael, which would go a long way to evening out the full measure of his story. A fine companion piece to the slick-surfaced Michael is the surprisingly raw documentary released shortly after his 2009 death at 50, This Is It. There, we saw Michael without make-up or prep, deep in rehearsals for his would-be comeback tour. The curtain was pulled back, and the man behind the carefully polished myth lived and breathed before us, to endearing ends. 

Michael left Neverland and that Santa Maria courtroom a free but tarnished and doomed public figure. But he never quite recaptured the electrifying energy he summoned in the early stage of his career, with and without brothers in tow. The tragic element of his story still needs to be processed.