Tragic Women and the Biopic Boom
The popularity of the biopic genre has surged in recent years, with audiences getting a cinematic glimpse into the lives of stars like Bob Marley (One Love), Priscilla Presley (Priscilla) and Donald Trump (The Apprentice), to name but a few from 2024.
The frequency with which studios are producing these biographies allows for a discernible trend to be spotted regarding who is depicted and how they are presented.
Successful Biopics of 2024/5
2025’s most successful biopic so far is James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown. Starring Timothée Chalamet, the film explores Bob Dylan’s early years, focusing on his meteoric rise and controversial transition from acoustic to electric.
A Complete Unknown marks Mangold’s return to the music biopic genre nearly two decades after his Oscar-winning Walk the Line. That film chronicled Johnny Cash’s journey to stardom, depicting his battles with substance abuse and personal struggles, but ultimately concluding on a hopeful note with his sobriety, marriage to June Carter, and cemented legacy as a country icon.
Mangold’s latest feature has already proven to be both a critical and commercial success, topping the UK and Ireland box office since its release on 17 January and grossing $7.3 million worldwide. Given Dylan’s enduring influence and Mangold’s proven track record, its triumph comes as little surprise.
But A Complete Unknown isn’t the only biopic making waves. Michael Gracey’s experimental film Better Man, released in December 2024, offers a unique take on the highs and lows of fame, this time through the lens of British pop star Robbie Williams. The film has been praised as "remarkable" for its raw depiction of Williams' rise to superstardom, his self-destructive downfall, and his eventual redemption. Williams himself played a key role in shaping the project, even voicing his metaphorical ‘monkey’ character in the film, and has since affirmed its faithfulness to his story.
These successes signal a continued appetite for biographical storytelling in cinema. With biopics on Bruce Springsteen, Sir Paul McCartney, and Fred Astaire slated for release in 2025, the trend shows no signs of slowing down. But, what of the ‘true stories’ of women? If male artist biopics are often framed as heroic and epic, female artist biopics tend to lean towards tragedy.
A Historical Interest in Tragic Women
The tragic female figure has been a recurring motif in storytelling throughout history, from the Greeks’ doomed Echo to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Shakespeare’s suicidal Ophelia.
These narratives reinforce the notion that suffering is an intrinsic part of femininity—portraying women as fragile, susceptible, and ultimately powerless against the forces that destroy them. In contrast, male characters are often afforded redemption, complexity, or heroism in their struggles, shaping vastly different cultural perceptions of gendered suffering.
Few figures embody this romanticised vision of female melancholy more than Ophelia. Her descent into madness and eventual drowning in Hamlet has captivated artists for centuries, most famously in John Everett Millais’ painting Ophelia (1851).
Here, her corpse floats serenely in the water, her hands open in quiet surrender, surrounded by lush, detailed flora. Millais’ work echoes Shakespeare’s description of Ophelia’s ‘mermaid-like’ death, transforming her final moments into an image of ethereal beauty.
Significantly, Ophelia’s madness—often framed as ‘erotic melancholy’—renders her chaotic and disruptive in life, yet once she succumbs to death, she regains dignity and aesthetic appeal. The implication is clear: women in turmoil are seen as dangerous, irrational, and unsightly, but in death, they are purified, passive, and palatable. This sentiment echoes across centuries of literature and art, reinforcing the troubling notion that women are somehow more valuable—more beautiful, more poetic—when they are silenced, suffering, or gone altogether.
Continued Interest in Tragic Women
This is not to say that male artists’ lives are free from hardship—on the contrary, Michael Gracey’s Better Man serves as a cautionary tale about the perils of fame. However, what lingers with audiences is Robbie Williams’ recovery and career resurgence, reinforcing a narrative of triumph over adversity.
By contrast, recent biopics about female artists and public figures—Spencer (Princess Diana), Blonde (Marilyn Monroe), Maria (Maria Callas), and the controversial Back to Black (Amy Winehouse)—have focused heavily on their struggles, particularly with mental health. Rather than celebrating their vast achievements, these films often centre their suffering as the defining aspect of their legacies.
The pattern seems set to continue, with the upcoming Janis, starring Shailene Woodley as Janis Joplin—another member of the infamous ‘27 Club’ alongside Winehouse.
Much of the controversy surrounding these films stems from concerns about exploitation. Many of these women were subjected to relentless media scrutiny and industries that arguably contributed to their downfalls. Unlike Better Man, where Williams actively shaped his own portrayal, these women have no agency in how their stories are told. As a result, they risk being reduced to victims rather than the brilliant, complex, and influential figures they were.
By dramatizing the intimate struggles of deceased figures, biopics often blur the line between artistic license and exploitation, raising questions about historical accuracy and the ethics of embellishment for dramatic effect.
Few films exemplify this issue more than Blonde (dir. Andrew Dominik, 2023), which provoked widespread backlash for its lurid and dehumanising portrayal of Marilyn Monroe.
The film presents a series of compromising, unverified scenes, including a harrowing depiction of Monroe’s mother attempting to drown her as a child, an exploitative reenactment of an alleged sexual encounter with President John F. Kennedy, and grotesque, surrealist sequences of forced abortion and miscarriage.
These moments serve less as an exploration of Monroe’s inner world and more as a relentless display of suffering, stripping her of agency and reducing her to little more than a spectacle of victimhood.
This exploitative tone reaches its peak in the film’s final moments. Dominik chooses to end Blonde with a macabre and undignified shot of Monroe’s corpse in the very room where she died. The washed-out filter almost zombifies her, exposing veins beneath her skin, leaving audiences with a disturbing and grotesque image—one that lingers far beyond the closing credits.
Even the film’s promotion was tainted by questionable choices. As though to preempt criticism about whether Monroe would have ‘approved’ of her portrayal, lead actress Ana de Armas bizarrely claimed during the press tour that the late star’s spirit was ‘with us’ on set, supposedly ‘throwing things off the wall’ in some ghostly act of protest or presence.
Rather than adding credibility, this remark only reinforced the unsettling spectacle surrounding Blonde—a film that, under the guise of a ‘liberal biography,’ ultimately serves as yet another injustice to Monroe’s legacy, and the genre of the biopic for their female subjects.
