Deeply fascinating and surprisingly moving, Michael Jackson’s This Is It is the highest-grossing concert movie in the history of cinema for a reason. While it isn’t the absolute best documentary I’ve ever seen, the Kenny Ortega picture provides more than a simple glimpse at the behind-the-scenes proceedings of the massive This Is It concert tour and offers a profound portrait of the man and a performer who captivated the world.
The This Is It tour was a planned series of 50 concerts to be held at the O2 Arena in London. Jackson was to start the tour in July of 2009 and would wrap sometime around March of 2010. It was a massive undertaking, as Ortega’s documentary shows us, and it would have marked Michael’s first major series of concerts since 1997.
Unfortunately less than three weeks before the first concert date, Jackson died. With 50 cancelled shows, the potential for one of the greatest concert tours of all time came crashing down. Michael rehearsed for the massive tour at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and filmed it, leaving countless hours of footage behind after his passing. Ortega claimed that there was no intent to release the footage shot by documentarians Sandrine Orabona and Tim Patterson, but Michael’s passing changed all that.
Obviously there was a fair bit of controversy regarding the release of the footage in Michael Jackson’s This Is It. Many cite Jackson’s perfectionism as a reason to not release footage of him essentially practicing for the concert tour, while others see it as a cash grab. Whatever it is, it is a fascinating piece of work that highlights the magic, talent and stunning vigour of the late performer.
Michael Jackson’s This Is It is an incredibly revealing and amazingly poignant piece of work. The music is astonishing, as you might expect, and the choreographer and performance that would have greeted the world at the O2 Arena would have been spectacular. The set design is just terrific and the video footage shot for the big screen at the show is stellar, but this documentary is about more than just an incredible show.
It blows the lid off of the rumours that Jackson was too weak to tour, for starters. Here we find a singer and dancer with tremendous talent and a copious amount of real, legitimate humility towards his craft. He is constantly considerate and soft-spoken, never raising his voice or acting like a spoiled superstar towards the other performers or the concert staff. There is no hint of the weirdness or the oddity that generally accompanies the Jackson name, either, and as a result the picture never feels exploitative.
Jackson is never shown exhausted or in pain throughout the documentary, which makes the drug use and his eventual demise all the more difficult to take. His choreography is not only tricky, it is bloody fascinating. The way he builds moves on top of other moves is stunning, as is the way he constructs from abrupt edges to develop smooth, fluid movements.
With Michael Jackson’s This Is It, we are shown what never was in detail. The hard work, the passion and the energy that went into these concerts was not to be and there is something tragic about that going beyond the passing of Michael. This was his passion, clearly, and he was a man who lived to perform and blow people away. With this documentary, whether it would have been his wish or not, he has one last chance to do just that.
9.3/10
Trailer:
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