Director Antoine Fuqua's Michael, the glitzy biopic about the King of Pop, will undoubtedly make a billion dollars, set toes a-tapping during screenings with its many musical numbers, and serve as a fantasia for fans of the revered Jackson, who died in 2009 at age 50.
It will also undoubtedly be met with puzzlement and skepticism from viewers who wonder if the film's narrative, written by Jim Logan (Skyfall, Gladiator, Any Given Sunday, among other fine films), is a sanitized tribute or the unvarnished truth? My call is it is more of the former than of the latter.
Jaafar Jackson, son of Michael's brother Jermaine, carries the weight of the picture on his slender shoulders, channeling his uncle's voice and movements to uncanny effect. Fuqua's splendid staging of Jaafar's singing and dancing is rightly to be celebrated.
The young Jackson's performance is often mesmerizing, but I wondered if his closeness to the subject of the film was not as much of a benefit as it might appear on first pass. Though he was only 7 when his uncle died, I can imagine expectations that he "get it right" were always present as he worked on the picture, which is produced by the Jackson family, wth the notable exception of Janet. What a burden!
Jaafar's work on the picture might have even more in common with Michael's professional life -- at least as presented in the film. Beginning when Michael was a wunderkind (the winning child actor Juliano Valdi), he was berated and beaten by his father, Joseph (Colman Domingo). Joseph was the brutal Svengali who shaped Michael and his four brothers into the Jackson 5 and rode their celebrity out of relative penury in Gary, IN, into enviable prosperity in Encino, CA. He insisted on perfection, pushing the boys unmercifully, as mother Katherine (Nia Long) stood at a distance, silent but unapproving. Everyone feared and resented Joseph, and that was his intent.
Domingo has a legendary range and an appetite for highly distinctive character parts; he appears to be at his most powerful playing villains (Bobby T in Running Man, Mister in The Color Purple, William Burke in Candyman, for example). Here, Domingo's Joseph is an unnerving presence, even when off-screen, for he has deeply wounded the film's title star. In fact, that appears to be the message of the picture, which will certainly strike more than a few as pat and unpersuasive.
I can imagine some taking exception to saddling Joseph with all of his youngest son's peculiarities -- his elfin-voice, predilection for toys and exotic animals, his strange fixation on the fairytale about the eternal boy Peter Pan and his "happy place" -- Neverland.
Some will question Logan's pop psych rendering of Jackson's infamous pathology, excluding the charges of misconduct with children, which do not appear in the picture -- at least not directly. There is a curious subtext during some scenes where Jackson is interacting with young fans, but that's all.
Others might question Katherine's role in her son's pathology, in his emotional immaturity. She tells Michael that he is special, different from his brothers, and all other children. This might have created a different kind of psychological scarring that the picture does not plumb.
Still, Jaafar Jackson's impressive performance is central and crucial to this uneven unraveling of the rise and fall of one of the most enigmatic of contemporary entertainers. And for that reason alone, it is worth the price of the ticket.
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