“When are you going to take me in your arms?” asks the young Reginald Dwight to his father Stanley. “Stop being a girly man”, replied the latter. This exchange is one of the moments in the most unsettling of the film Rocketman , biopic musical by Elton John, brilliantly played by Taron Egerton. The scene is meant to illustrate the lack of affection that the future singer had suffered in his childhood and that he would have tried to compensate by various addictions.
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But if Elton John has always said that his father was unable to appreciate his sensitivity and his success, it is not the same for all his family. In an interview published this weekend in the british newspaper The Daily Mail , the half-brother of the star, Geoff Dwight, accused the film of demonizing their father. “Dad had a big heart and loved us all so much,” says the one who today has almost no contact with his half-brother. He was incredibly proud of Elton and all that he has accomplished.”
The british actor Steven Mackintosh plays Stanley Dwight, the father of Elton John in “Rocketman” by Dexter Fletcher, the face of Taron Egerton. Photo Credit: David Appleby/David Appleby
another key scene in the relationship between Stanley and Elton in Rocketman is the one where the father, back from a military campaign, prefers to dine rather than run to regain his son to the floor. And this, under the eyes of the young boy remained at the top of the stairs of the family home. “I can’t believe it,” said Geoff Dwight. Dad was there when Elton was born, and he never stopped paying attention to him.”
“He never liked me”
After the divorce of the parents of Elton John, Rocketman watch Stanley Dwight find happiness with a second wife, with whom he had four boys. During a reunion between the father and the son, to two-thirds of the film, Elton John appears jealous of the attention that his father’s door to her new offspring, while it shows insensitive to the success of its older brother. “He never liked me, he never caught me in his arms and he never came to see me in concert,” explained the singer to the Oxford Union four years ago.
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A point that his half-brother mad also. He recalls that their father had bought Elton a piano, it had been deliver to the address where he lived with his mother. “The coldness portrayed in the film is a million miles away from what was really my father, says Geoff Dwight. It was the product of an era where men were kissing not and do not show their emotions every minute of every day.”
The half-brother of Elton John remembers also the last moments of the life of his father. Lying on his death-bed, he is surrounded by the sons of his second marriage, namely, Geoff, Stanley Jr, Robert and Simon. And when a friend allegedly told him that he had four wonderful sons, it is said to have replied: “I have five wonderful sons.” Elton John has not yet not responded to the words of his half-brother.
