With superheroes and big budget spectacles like “Jurassic World” dominating the summer box office, it came as somewhat of a surprise that the music biopic “Straight Outta Compton” resonated with audiences like it did. The music biopic, a staple of film industry and a go to for directors, has often received critical if not always commercial acclaim. There’s something about musicians, their passionate and sometimes obsessive nature mixed with self destructive tendencies, that makes for a good film and story. Some of the best music biopics take viewers to the very soul of the artist, pulling back the threads of their public persona. 

Walk The Line

James Mangold’s Academy awarded nominated feature presents country music legend Johnny Cash as a flawed man dealing with both success and his own demons. Mangold’s approach to Cash’s feels real, selling the audience on the early relationship between Cash and his future wife, June Carter. Joaquin Phoenix’s Cash and Reese Witherspoon’s Carter give compelling performances in their roles with Phoenix’s imitation of Cash’s voice almost indistinguishable from the real thing. While the film may not hold to real life, the characters and their relationship feel genuine showing why Cash was such a pragmatic figure to audiences.

I’m Not There

There are music biopics, and then, there’s Todd Haynes’ experimental take on Bob Dylan. Less adhered to Dylan’s life than the feelings inspired by Dylan, the film is a non linear puzzle of six separate characters, each representing a different part of Dylan’s public personality. The film is one of the most surrealist biopics out there, sticking to its own set of logic and rules. Among the cast playing characters based on a white male is Marcus Carl Franklin, an African American actor and actress Cate Blanchett. Both give great performance, capturing the different aspects of Dylan in one of the weirdest biopics made.

Ray

Bolstered by an Oscar winning performance from Jamie Fox, the 2004 biopic on Ray Charles offers some great performances even if it does take some artistic integrity with Charles’s life. “Ray” focuses on 30 years in the life Charles’s life from his early childhood when he was blinded at the age of 7 to his early career. Throughout his scenes, Fox’s embodies Charles from his onstage persona to his rocky real life dealing with his drug problems while showing the successes he had in overcoming his blindness and social status. The story moves in a redemption arc following Charles as he fights against his demons. 

Control

The title of the 2007 biopic named after singer Ian Curtis’s penned “She’s Lost Control” could very much refer to the musician’s own life. Filmed in black and white, the picture dives into Curtis’s dreary world beginning with the formation of the punk band Joy Division and ending with the singer’s suicide at the age of 23. Set in the 1970s, the film shows Curtis’s battles with both depression and epilepsy and the musician’s fear it would eventually kill him.  A haunting film from start to finish, the biopic is surprisingly speckled with moments of dark humor with a bleak but emotional conclusion.