British actor Jacob Fortune-Lloyd stars as the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein in this uneven but well-meaning biopic. The screenplay by Brigit Grant and Jonathan Wakeham weaves the story in and around the two or three main facets of Epstein that are always invoked in every potted bio: he was instrumental in the Beatles’ huge international success (Paul McCartney would later describe him as “the fifth Beatle”), he was Jewish, and he was gay. It certainly unfurls itself on a broader canvas than the 1991 drama The Hours and Times, although that tight, intimate low-budget work, which featured David Angus as Epstein and a young Ian Hart as John Lennon on a weekend trip to Barcelona together, still stands up as one of the most nuanced and insightful works of Beatles-themed speculative fiction. But this one has fancier costumes, particularly in its final scene, where we see the Beatles in full-on flowers-in-their-hair and brocade Nehru-jacket-finery as they film a live international broadcast, which happened just before Epstein died of an accidental drug overdose in 1967, aged 32.
Clearly, the film ends on the broadcast’s triumphant note in order to give a bit of uplift to what is largely a sad story, if you take out the bits where Epstein makes a fortune for himself and the Beatles building a management business. (He also managed Gerry and the Pacemakers and Cilla Black, played sympathetically here by Darci Shaw.) Because if you subtract the success, then Epstein’s story here is a classic tale of gay martyrdom, all semi-closeted despair and suffering as he goes from cottaging encounters (which bring beatings and blackmail attempts) to a toxic relationship with an American lover, Tex Ellington (Ed Speleers), who ends up robbing and humiliating poor trusting Brian. At least his mum Queenie (Emily Watson, avoiding the worst Jewish mother cliches thankfully) always loved him, even if his father (Eddie Marsan) could never understand his son.
Lashings of archive footage and obvious theatrical techniques such as split-screen projections and fourth-wall breaking monologues to camera from Fortune-Lloyd help to distract from the fact that the budget isn’t sufficient to recreate key moments in the Beatles’ history, apart from the Royal Variety Show where Lennon told the rich people in the audience to rattle their jewellery. And clearly, the film-makers didn’t get the rights to any of the Fab Four’s music, so it’s left to the quartet playing the Beatles to get across the band’s youthful charisma with energetic covers of other artists’ tunes in the early scenes, but only Jonah Lees as Lennon makes much of an impression as an actual character here. It’s all a bit too sanctified and safe – lacking in rock’n’roll edge perhaps – but Fortune-Lloyd’s core performance is deeply empathic and buoys the film up as it races through the stations of Epstein’s short, sharp shock of a life.
• Midas Man is on Prime Video from 30 October.
