This Is It

Last night I went to the Savoy, a famous old Dublin cinema, to see the film about Michael Jackson’s final concert preparations, This Is It. As a film scholar, I realise that I am opening myself up to accusations of extremely bad taste, but here’s the truth: I was a Michael Jackson fan long before I was a film scholar, and in this case, my tweenage infatuation trumps my much more adult perspective. Or, perhaps, I can blame it on my friend Shannon, who insisted we see it after I demonstrated my moon walk one evening while she and Deb were generously hosting me, filling me with delicious homemade antipasto and red wine (real Italian antipasto, I might add – not vegetable chutney from a jar). Shannon was excited to find another Michael Jackson fan, because, she told me, there was no way she would be dragging Debs out to see the film. And then we swapped stories of what paraphernalia we remembered best from our childhood: me, the red zipper jacket from Thriller and the eight full sized posters in my bedroom; Shannon, the glitter glove, homemade by her parents, much to Shannon’s disappointment.

Michael Jackson, we all know, was a very odd fellow; there’s the Neverland stuff, the hooded surrogate children, and the multiple surgeries that left him looking like a futuristic android (gynoid?) But he also seemed like a little boy, not so much in the fun sense of a Peter Pan, to whom he is often compared, but to a child who has lost his mom at the supermarket, and who sits alone in front of the fountain, not knowing what to do next. Some of this naivete comes across in the film. At one point he talks about the importance of saving the planet, and you can feel that he really means it, but his simple language, soft voice, and even softer delivery make it sound like you’re listening to a ten year-old doing a presentation at the front of the classroom. It is remarkable how he can talk about environmental catastrophes, and humanity’s role in these catastrophes, without sounding the least bit political.

The film is basically a series of rehearsals for the big concert, shot over a limited number of days. Much to my disappointment, there was no extended moonwalk shot, but then again we have to remember that this footage was never meant to be a film. He wasn’t expected to be dead less than a year after it was shot. Some of the time, Michael Jackson is backed by a group of incredibly talented dancers, and at other times, he performs alone on the stage, making all of the characteristic moves that made him famous. (I could call him MJ as everyone in the film does, but this must be from another era in his life, because I didn’t call him that in the 80s).  On a couple of occasions, he shimmies up to one of the guitar players, or one of the backup singers, and does something that ends up looking incredibly awkward: he tries to interact with them. When the amazing electric guitar player rocks her stuff at the front of the stage, he sort of bends down a bit, and tries to do a little dance with her, moving his arms out to the side, beyond her guitar, and so on. I found it painful to watch, because it reveals so clearly his total isolation from the social world around him. And it reveals this in a moment when he is otherwise King – dancing in a way that still gives me the shivers because it’s so incredible. In one sequence, he goes into the song Human Nature, which requires him to hit some really high notes, which he does so brilliantly, his voice sounding hardly any different for its 50 years than it did when he was a teenager. How is this possible? He may have lived an extremely eccentric and questionable life, but his talent is unmatched.

I have always liked Motown - it feels like the core musical genre that speaks to me -- but I realised while watching the movie that my musical tastes, preferred tempo, and sense of the dramatic in music have been deeply shaped by Michael Jackson. A few times in the film, he has the musicians stop and take it back a few bars. Or he asks for an extended silence. Or for the tempo to increase or decrease. And each time he made one of these adjustments, I just felt YES! This is right! This moves me! But of course it does -- his style built my musical tasteS in the first place.

As money-making postmortem films go, this one isn't half bad. I expected it to waddle in the maudlin -- to show us lots of footage of Jackson in his daily life, hiding from prying eyes, another victim of paparazzi-overload. I thought there would be a lot more shaping of the material to include interviews and perspectives on his life and death. And while it does have some of this, the film over all is pretty pared down. Most of the time, it is just Michael on stage, singing and strutting. The way it should be.