Requiem for a wren

See this shot of Michael Jackson taken from the ground up – from, say, the musicians’ pit just below the lip of the stage: his lithe body, with pelvis thrust forward like a light-catcher, curves tautly backwards; his arms angle back from narrow, fragile-looking shoulders; his fingers stretch back as far as the joints will allow; his face is raised as if to feel rain – and you know that you are seeing one of the most iconic musician poses of all time. Tenuously tethered to the stage on legs thin as asparagus shoots, Michael Jackson seems to be flying. This Icarus pose is fitting company for other iconic poses – Ian Anderson’s monoped tramp, Keith Emerson’s Grim Reaper-like swoop on the multi-keyboard Moog, Pete Townshend’s spread-legged leap, Freddie Mercury’s phallic pose with a mike. If there is one visual that remains, like an afterimage burnt on your retina, even days after seeing Michael Jackson’s This Is It, this is it.

Kenny Ortega, who was director of Michael Jackson’s planned 50-concert comeback gig scheduled to start at O2 in London in July 2009, extracted the 110-minute-long Michael Jackson’s This Is It from 100 hours of high-def rehearsal footage. Had Michael Jackson not died when he did, the This Is It concert tour would have been his first series of stage appearances since the HIStory World Tour (1996-97). The film is teeming with moments that can make you freely condone whatever the world says Michael Jackson was, and wasn’t. I am a Michael Jackson fan who wore a disclaimer on his sleeve – one of those regretful people whose impression of the music of The King of Pop was coloured by revelations about his life. I went to see This Is It (“my final curtain call”, as MJ presciently told the public not long before his death three weeks before the first show was to begin), and came out of the theatre utterly changed, more changed than I had been on the Thursday that he died, 25 June, which is marked on my long calendar of deaths to mourn all my life.

The movie changed me by the many things it showed that I didn’t know and didn’t expect about the man: by the childlike architecture of MJ’s much-sculpted face; by his light-throated contralto, so unexpected in a man of 50; by the incredible energy in a bony-assed body unenhanced by muscle or fat, every move precision-timed and just so; by the imaginativeness of the 3-D ‘Thriller’ graveyard, with its elaborate zombie prostheses and mummy dancers; by MJ’s long, impromptu, intimate exchange with vocalist Judith Hill in ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’; by footage that revealed that MJ, far from being a musical cipher propped up by a legion of excellent musicians and technicians, was one of those very few modern musicians who knew every inch of the logistics of a stage performance, from every note, every key, every beat in each of his songs to lighting and pyrotechnics to the rhythm of stage entrances to personal dance moves and choreography to sound engineering; by his refusal to lose his shirt to technical aggravations; by his unfailing politeness; by the sheer power of his presence, which made candy out of hardnosed professionals like director Kenny Ortega; by the breathtaking, unending, solo dance in ‘Billie Jean’ – the song whose signature bass line Quincy Jones disliked so much that it almost didn’t make it into Thriller (this is the song that I’m going to buy the DVD for).

It came as a bit of a surprise that a film that is meant to be a panegyric – I’m still not sure whether or not some of the things I was changed by were acted out by MJ for the benefit of the camera – had as its first song ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’. As a kick-starter for an album, it is the best of all choices: its disco beat and the harsh rock vibes of its vocals are ambitious and faultless. But as the first song of a tribute, it’s a bit gauche: MJ was long bedevilled by his not having showed gratitude to Manu Dibango, the Cameroonian saxophonist from whose ‘Soul Makossa’ he cribbed the song’s last refrain, “Mama-se, mama-sa, mama-coo-sa.”

Other than that, every song that follows is a revelation. There is some sub-par video and audio footage, mostly in ‘Thriller’, but for the most part the sound is impeccable, which is more than one can say about many concert films. (The bass is sledgehammer-heavy throughout the film, but the upper reaches never gain enough altitude to warrant frequent Dolby interventions, which is a good thing because Dolby in most movie theatres in India sucks.) The edits of ‘Black or White’ and ‘Beat It’ could be released right now in every music channel in the world and whale the life out of most videos in circulation.

Kenny Ortega said that the footage for This Is It was originally meant for MJ’s private library, which is why there is a distinct paucity of cameras – in a couple of scenes, you can actually see camera jockeys ferreting around for angles – and consequent cuts and slideslips. This is, for viewers, a good thing because it lets us watch the often intricate dance moves in their entirety. There are some dance-sequence split screens – warm tones in one half, cool tones in the other – but they are quickly dispensed with in favour of single-screen takes with conservative (by today’s palsied standards) POVs.

But even the very capable visual departments can’t conceal the CGI. It’s quite telling that it wasn’t the Sound Department that had the longest list of people in its employ but the Visual Effects department, followed by the Camera and Electrical Department. I watched the special effects and short films made for the tour with both enthralment and regret – they are all that are left of the thousands of dancers who were flown in from all over the world for a final audition with MJ in May 2009 and who were whittled down to 12 finalists, of the 18-22 songs and 22 different sets designed for the concert tour, of the aerialists and pole dancing “specialists” (as the voiceover sombrely calls them) who were to perform in a routine similar to that of Cirque du Soleil, of the 300,000 Swarovski crystals that were to adorn MJ’s costumes.
 
However, much of the inventiveness that was to embellish the scheduled concert performances has been preserved. ‘Thriller’, despite having some of the iffiest audio in the film, has its graveyard taken into very camp and self-amused Tim Burton territory (all the – extremely acrobatic – ghouls wear cheesy grins). ‘Smooth Criminal’ is a green screen marvel, an interstitial video that shoehorns MJ into the classic Hollywood films he watched over and over again in his Neverland minitheatre – from Gilda (1946) with Rita Hayworth to the Humphrey Bogart-starrer In a Lonely Place (1950). MJ is inserted into old footage of Rita Hayworth and movie gangster Edward G Robinson, and if he seems out of place it’s only because his wardrobe – fedora, striped white tux, suspenders and spats – is faux period and theirs is, well, period. But there is a reason why the full interstitial footage hasn’t been shown in the movie: it is fodder for the inevitable DVD/Blu-ray of the film, to be released by Christmas 2009 and which Sony Music hints might have two to three hours of additional content.
 
Like many who came away thirsty from This Is It, I’m hoping that the DVD release will have more inside takes – but it’s unlikely because the footage rights contract between MJ’s estate and Columbia Pictures expressly stated that “footage that paints Jackson in a bad light will not be permitted”. Despite the almost necrophilic nature of much of the interest in MJ since his death, there has been, till now, very little documentation on his working life. During ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ rehearsal, the film has him correcting keyboardist Michael Bearden on an almost impalpably nuanced tempo change. Bearden gently iterates the need for MJ to be present more frequently if he wants more exactitude, at which MJ snaps back, “I want it like I wrote it.” He corrects dancers mid-move: sandbagged inside this muscular, beefy lot, MJ looks as fragile as a stick insect; but he has an economy of movement they can only aspire to and an energy that leaves them panting. He feints with a vocal coach who can barely keep up with him, moaning once in a while about his need to “conserve his voice” (usually after he himself has let rip).
 
Vocalist Judith Hill – who attracted global attention when she sang the lead on ‘Heal the World’ at MJ’s memorial service on July 7 – keeps glancing unsurely in his direction for cues and is never quite comfortable with her proximity to someone she says she has idolised since she was in her teens. MJ exhorts lead guitarist Orianthi Panagaris, a striking half-Greek, half-Australian blonde who has been listed among the world’s top 12 women guitarists, to play a riff in ‘Black or White’ to breaking point, saying, “It’s your time to shine. Go for it.” Panagaris, who has been compared to Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Eddie Van Halen, can’t ever quite get where MJ wants her to go, not even during the final take with rhythm guitarist Tommy Organ. But in ‘Beat It’, Panagaris provides a near-flawless rendition of one of the best guitar solos in music history (which Van Halen had provided gratis to MJ).

This Is It – as an album, his sixth posthumous compilation – is a beguiling mix of the best of MJ, from his antics lying on his back on the floor in ‘Beat It’ to the coquettish dance in ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ to the militaristic stomp in ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ to melodic balladry in ‘Human Nature’ and eco-blues in ‘Earth Song’. The title track, ‘This Is It’, has garnered its share of disdain and enthusiasm, but both critical responses seem to come from a region of stiff partisanship. When the number was released on October 12, Twitter exploded with encomiums, and MJ and the song became the hottest Trending Topics on the microblogging site. In the film, if you listen to it with your heart still warm and genial in the afterglow of having heard some great songs reprised, you’ll perceive the number as a charming, mid-tempo romance anchored by orchestral string atmospherics, a sharp percussion and smooth vocals by MJ’s brothers. (But even in death, controversy hasn’t released MJ. Paul Anka co-wrote the song, then titled ‘I Never Heard’, and recorded it in 1983 for a planned duet between him and Jackson on his album Walk a Fine Line. Anka alleges that MJ “stole the tapes” from the studio. In the booklet of the This Is It album, only MJ is credited as the songwriter.)

Comparing – as many critics are doing – Michael Jackson’s This Is It to music films such as Gimme Shelter (1970), which chronicled The Rolling Stones’ 1969 US tour that ended with the violence-marred Altamont Speedway Free Festival, or Some Kind of Monster (2004), a close-up-and-personal documentary on Metallica, is like comparing chillies to cheese to chalk. Gimme Shelter was zero-commentary Direct Cinema, an unobtrusive fly-on-a-wall look at one of the most rambunctious, radical bands of all time; Some Kind of Monster was an intimate look at a band coming apart at the seams as one member (bassist Jason Newsted) resigned and another (frontman James Hetfield) suddenly quit to enter rehab. This Is It, in contrast, is an unashamedly loving requiem for an artist who died before his time was up.

In many ways, therefore, it hurts to watch This Is It. It’s a pre-event post-mortem of an affair that never was but could, and should, have been.


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