I always thought it was Ep-STINE, but in this biopic about legendary Beatles manager Brian Epstein it’s definitely Ep-STEEN. That’s how the man introduces himself, and his family, and how others address him. My friend who’s a lifelong Beatles buff and would beat me hands-down in any trivia quest says the movie has got it WRONG!
Be that as it may, he’s played by Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, a new one on me but he’s been in a few things – notably Wolf Hall, The Queen’s Gambit and Star Wars – The Rise of Skywalker but this seems to be his first starring role.
He breaks the third wall by talking to camera as Epstein to tell the story of how he came to be manager of what is still arguably the most successful rock band of all time. This is the only break with convention in what is otherwise a rather conventional piece of storytelling.
He takes us through his childhood, shared with brother Clive and his cultured, middle-class Jewish parents who run a successful furniture outlet in Liverpool, selling classical records as a bit of a sideline.
His father wants him to take over the family business but Brian loves modern music too and persuades his crusty old dad to let him expand the shop’s range to include jazz, pop and rock – anything really – with the promise that they’ll be able to get hold of any disc from anywhere in the world within a week. Or was it ten days?
Whatever. His instincts are sound, he has his finger on the pulse of what’s trending in popular music – ‘what are the kids into’ is his motto – and his venture is successful. He dreams big, and when a customer comes in asking about the local band that made a splash in Hamburg, he goes down to the Cavern Club to check them out, and you know the rest.
Eddie Marsan and Emily Watson are Epstein’s parents. As far as I can tell they are the only ‘name’ actors in the cast, and they’re very good.
There are some names among the cameos. Eddie Izzard appears briefly as Allan Williams, the manager who famously ‘gave The Beatles away’. When Epstein asks the lads if they’ll take him on as manager, John Lennon mildly queries whether he can do better than Williams who took them to Hamburg. Epstein replies ‘I’ll take you to New York.’
Jay Leno does a cameo as Ed Sullivan, who’s skeptical and even rude to Epstein when this posh young upstart from England assures him this band is going to be bigger than Elvis. It’s an unconvincing piece of casting; Sullivan was lanky, loose and hunched where Leno is big and bullish.
But no matter. At this point we’re still enjoying the rags-to-riches vibe.
Fortune-Lloyd is very good as Brian Epstein, a man of complex character: a hardworking, hard-headed businessman with boundless energy and self-belief, but with a touch of unworldliness, even innocence, when it came to detecting deviousness in others. Homosexuality was illegal in the UK at the time, and Epstein was vulnerable to shameful exposure and physical violence because of it.
This aspect of Epstein’s life is sensitively and movingly handled. Watch for the excruciating scene where he has to tell his parents about a blackmail threat.
Everyone wants to know: do the actors look like The Beatles? I think so, especially in their older post-Revolver incarnations, when their clothing and hairstyles became more raffish and individually distinctive. By the time they’re making Sergeant Pepper the young actor playing John Lennon especially looks like him, with those trademark round spectacles.
It’s a young cast playing young people so they’re largely unknown. Some of them come from bands that are also unknown, which is to say I’ve never heard of them. Paul McCartney is played by Blake Richardson from a band called band New Hope Club and the John Lennon lookalike is Jonah Lees from The Phantom of the Open.
Other unknowns play Pete Best, George Martin, Gerry Marsden and Cilla Black. No point listing their names – there’s scant material available online to flesh them out.
Epstein also managed Gerry and the Pacemakers, but we don’t hear any of their music even though who were very big at the time and even got to number one before the Beatles did, as Gerry teasingly joshes John Lennon, in a fleeting cameo with Epstein doing a piece to camera introducing his Liverpool acts lined up behind him on a stairway.
We do see and hear from Cilla Black, another of his big successes, but her inclusion is curious considering she wasn’t that much bigger than Gerry and the Pacemakers. At one stage she has a long tete-a-tete with Epstein, a scene which is neither emotionally affecting nor enlightening and which slows the pace right down.
She seems to have been given prominence because the young actress who plays her – Darci Shaw – can sing OK and does passable versions of Anyone Who Had a Heart and You’re My World.
We can only surmise that the filmmakers had the Cilla Black music rights but not the G and the PM catalogue.
Amazingly, they didn’t have the rights to The Beatles’ music either, and this is the biggest problem with Midas Man – we don’t hear ANY of their original music. All we see is those famous song names rising up the charts on paper.
It’s huge problem. The cast and crew do a valiant job trying to convey the excitement generated by the music, but while we can believe the Cavern Club kids grooving crazily away to Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis covers, tribute band versions of Please Mr Postman and Besame Mucho just don’t cut it.
Another gripe: the Australian tour is left out. So what? Well, it was their first major overseas tour and the first to demonstrate the size and power of Beatlemania. Even the band themselves were surprised. And just consider: in Adelaide, a third of the population turned out to welcome them!
Historical accuracy: I’m not a particular Beatles wonk but I thought they came back from Hamburg with the mop-top hair. The suits were Epstein’s idea, but not the hair, which was a German fashion.
And I wouldn’t have noticed it myself but apparently Paul playing a right-handed bass guitar upside down is a howler.
Still, it’s fun as well as being a bit sad, and there’s a lot of pleasure to be had in watching the hero of a story struggling upwards against the odds towards a glorious outcome no one knows about yet except us, the audience.