Story of a tyrannical father

I’ve noticed over the years that films critics dismiss can sometimes be received quite differently by ordinary audiences. That thought came to mind after I finished Michael, the latest biopic that’s been drawing audiences worldwide. It hasn't exactly been warmly received by critics who think they know best, but I found the film engaging, not least because of the music. At the same time, what lingered most wasn’t just the songs or the spectacle, but the shadow of a father hanging over the entire story.

A big part of why the film worked was Jaafar Jackson. Playing his uncle, Michael Jackson, couldn’t have been easy, but he carried it off with real conviction. It was not just the look or the voice, it was the movement. The moonwalk, the toe balancing, the whole physical language was there. But what made it more than imitation was the way he showed Michael reacting to pressure, especially from his father.

That brings me to Colman Domingo as Joe Jackson. The film leant into the idea of Joe as a tyrannical figure, someone who governed through fear, control and an unyielding belief that greatness must be forced into existence. Domingo played him with a tight, contained menace, and I can well believe he’ll be in the running for Best Supporting Actor when awards season comes around.

What gave the film its backbone was that relationship. Everything seemed to flow from it. Joe drove the boys relentlessly, convinced he was pulling them out of a life that would otherwise swallow them. And in a way, he was right. But the cost was written all over Michael. The film kept returning to that tension, not in big dramatic bursts but in small moments. A look, a hesitation, a silence. Even at the height of his fame, Michael was still trying to step out from under his father’s grip. When Michael finally began to assert himself, it didn’t feel like triumph so much as release. Even then, his father's shadow did not quite disappear immediately. It was a slow and uneasy separation.

Around that central thread, the film played the hits, and they did their job. The familiar songs lifted the energy whenever they came in, and like that other big biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, this was something that would really benefit from being heard on a big screen. The sound fills the space in a way that a smaller setup just can’t quite match.

But there were gaps. The other Jackson siblings, especially the sisters, felt pushed into the background. And the film noticeably sidestepped the more troubling controversies that followed Michael later in life. I could feel a certain smoothing over, a decision to keep the story within safer boundaries.

Even so, taken on its own terms, I found it more absorbing than I expected. It may not tell the whole story, but it told one part of it clearly enough: the making of a superstar under the hand of a father who believed that love meant control, and that success justified the cost. And by the end, that’s the part that lingered.