Michael - Movie Review
Long-haul flights within India are my personal screening rooms.
The Dubai to Boston sector on Emirates last week, all 15-odd hours of it, could have practically been a film festival in the sky for me, though I managed to catch just one movie “Up in the Air”.
That is how I finally watched Michael, the long-awaited biopic on the King of Pop.
I had consciously avoided reviews. Films about legends carry the weight of expectation. I went in curious, but cautious.
I was not prepared for what followed.
There is a scene where young Michael gets thrashed with a belt, and I found myself gripping the armrest. It is not dramatised for shock. It is quiet, ugly, and real. I had to look away.
Katherine Jackson (Nia Long) is the silent counterweight — loving, helpless, and heartbroken in equal measure. She holds the family together even as she watches it fracture.
Berry Gordy and Motown give the Jackson 5 their first real break, and you see young Michael bloom almost instantly under the spotlight, like he was always meant for it and only needed someone to open the door.
The Sony Music arc — the deal, the catalogue acquisition, the eventual fallout — is handled with surprising complexity. MJ was not just an artist. He was a strategist. And the film does not let you forget that.
One of the most quietly triumphant moments is when Billie Jean finally makes it to MTV — the first video by a Black artist to get heavy rotation.
Walter Yetnikoff of CBS Records reportedly threatened to pull every CBS artist off the channel if they refused. The scene where it actually plays on air carries a weight that goes far beyond music.
Michael Jackson had exotic pets — not as novelties, but as companions. There is a moment where young Michael says, quite simply, that a horse is not a pet. It is a friend. It stopped me cold.
He is seen talking to a snake, casually draped on his sofa. Bizarre, yes.
But you believe it completely. This was a man who found it easier to trust animals than people. Given what he went through, can you blame him?
The chimp — Bubbles — features in one of the most tender scenes in the film. Michael reads out a comic book to him, with the same earnestness you would read to a child. I am not ashamed to say I was teary-eyed.
Jaafar Jackson, MJ’s nephew, plays the title role. He is extraordinary. The physicality, the vulnerability, the sheer loneliness behind the sequins — he gets all of it right.
Michael is not a verdict on the man. It is a portrait. Flawed, complicated, and utterly riveting.
At 35,000 feet somewhere over the Atlantic, this film kept me completely still for nearly three hours.
That, by itself, is no small thing.
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