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This Is It
This Is It is well-edited archival footage of what was to be the first concert series by the King of Pop since 1997. It wasn't going to be new, innovative or fresh; it was mostly the old hits redone with a bigger budget and more special effects. But that's okay. This isn't rock and roll, this is pop music. Rock almost always seems a bit desperate as it ages, but great pop can be undisguised pandering to fans who know what they want, and Michael Jackson took that task quite seriously. From a reworked Smooth Criminal video featuring Michael shooting it out with Cagney and Bogart to a Jackson 5 style staging of I Want You Back to backdrops and special effects which, even in mock-up pre-dress rehearsal versions were phenomenal, the King of Pop had planned out a nostalgia trip so epic it was almost current again. Everything was there but Michael.
Walking through his dance steps with the slight shake of the chronically sedated and a face with more than a passing resemblance to the skull beneath, he was hard to look at at from the start of the film. His consistently airy and half-hearted vocals and his weary, bony body contrasted weirdly with his perfectionist direction and the edge beneath his interactions. Whenever MJ would have the slightest disagreement with any of the people working under him, he would say something like "it's okay, it's all love" with a defensiveness that made it clear that it wasn't all love.
Michael Jackson was clearly a broken genius, but he was a genius nonetheless, and there were moments during the movie when magical things would happen. Out from the creepy faux-flowerchild persona would suddenly emerge an artist, passionate in his work, and masterful in his craft, someone for whom it was crucial to perfect the smallest detail of his performance for the enjoyment of his audience. Out of the aging shuffle before his background dancers or the forced flirtatiousness with his female lead on a particular tune would emerge a glimpse of a Michael Jackson from decades ago, a singer warm and stylish and brilliant, literally unique in a genre where that term is too often used and almost never appropriate.
In some ways, this movie is the dim echo of a great and fantastic circus which never was, but in some ways it is much more. Michael's fanatically devoted dancers, some of whom break down in tears when, during auditions as they speak about how much he means to them may have a touch of the creepiness of true believers, but few of us would have heard their voices if the star hadn't died. The halting rehearsals and awkward interactions behind the scenes may have little of the polish of a big budget pop production, but how many people would have bothered to watch footage from the actual show? The This Is It show would have been one more comeback of an aging superstar desperate for money, but the This Is It movie allowed us to to examine all that was compelling, repellant and incomprehensible in an icon no one ever understood.
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