Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry (2021 | USA | 150 minutes | R. J. Cutler)
When R. J. Cutler’s experiential new documentary opens, his subject, Billie Eilish is sixteen years old, crafting songs from illustrated diary entries and engineered beats in her brother Finneas’s bedroom in their family’s modest Los Angeles bungalow. It closes, a little over two years later, when having just celebrated her nineteenth birthday, she cleaned up at the Grammy Awards as the youngest person to win the Big Four (Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Album of the Year), leaving the ceremony with multiple armloads of shiny gramophones (those, plus Pop Solo Performance, Pop Vocal Album and Producer of the Year for Finneas) and — more importantly — a congratulatory FaceTime call from her tweenage crush, Justin Bieber.
Between these bookends, momentous years for any teen, the film covers milestones familiar and astronomical. We see her studying for her driving exam, getting her first car, celebrating a seventeenth birthday, struggling with a boyfriend who’s a nice guy but might not be the right guy. But alongside that, she writes and records the chart-topping WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE ALL GO?, sells millions of records and racks up half a billion Spotify streams, tours multiple continents, gets into directing her own videos, overcomes technical difficulties at the most crowded and talked-about Coachella set of 2019 (where she first meets Bieber in a truly incredible scene), oh and she writes the theme song for the new Bond movie (who would’ve guessed that this doc would lap No Time To Die in terms of release dates?). It’s a lot.
At an absurdly generous two and a half hours (even on my couch, I have never been more relieved to see an INTERMISSION title card), there’s something here for each of her millions of Instagram followers. Alongside the opportunity for an insider’s view of these intimate songwriting moments, brief reprieves for everyday teenage life, there’s also the thrill of a backstage laminate and the perks of a front-row perspective for almost every whispery, weird, and energetic hit performed at shows around the world. No matter how quickly you smash the “buy ticket” button, or how early you show up for a gig, being one of the fresh faced admirers pushed up against the rail to sing along tearfully to every lyric is necessarily a terrain limited to few. Via Apple tv+ it’s now one that you can approximate in your own home, repeatedly, whenever you need a hit.
As a Certified Old, I knew very little about Billie Eilish before watching this documentary (I tried to see that Coachella set, but got too impatient to stick around while they sorted out the light show, and only caught a couple songs from far across a polo field as we were trudging off in search of another set or some overpriced hydration). By the end, with nary a talking head and a single descriptive title card, I can’t say that I learned much more beyond her chill demeanor, fondness for baggy clothes, and overwhelming desire not to disappoint. But how much we really deserve to know about a teenage girl aside from what she wants to tell us?
In that respect, the film mirrors the rare and incredible level of control that she and her family have maintained over her songwriting, production (she and Finneas are the only credited songwriters on WWAFAWDWAG; he produced every track), and public image. Even in her frustrated or down moments, one gets the sense that we’re not seeing anything from Billie Eilish that she doesn’t want to show us. Similarly, the film gives up next to nothing about her family, beyond the fact that her parents seem remarkably grounded and relentlessly supportive and her savant producer of a brother has only her best interests at heart.
So you’ll have to look elsewhere for sales figures and biographical details True Eyelashes neé Avocados — or whatever the people that she refuses to call “fans” are calling themselves these days — probably know all this stuff anyway. Where this concert biopic shines is in conveying lived-in sense of life on the road, performing through pain, and just how monstrously weird it must to be swarmed by strangers your age who absolutely adore you, to constantly concoct thoughtful responses sometimes cringeworthy music journalists’ questions (are there any other kind?), and to maintain good cheer through after-show meet-and-greet with allegedly important people and their selfie-seeking kids. I might have wished for a documentary that dug deeper into important questions like what’s really up with Finneas: can he really be that talented and nice? or: What color did Orlando Bloom’s aura turn when her realized that Billie didn’t recognize him during a backstage pep talk with his fiancee Katy Perry at Coachella? But I accept that it succeeds on its own terms: showing us what Billie Eilish wants to share about the experience of being Billie Eilish.
This opportunity to steer her own image represents a substantial progress, particularly for those of us old enough to remember having watched the Britney documentary. An often predatory music industry and voracious media has an atrocious track record, especially where young female stars are concerned. The degree to which Eilish and her family have maintained a sense of control (and occasional normalcy) feels kind of revolutionary. Cutler’s film is obviously a kind of image-crafting, but at least its a generous one that will satisfy both its subject and the legions who adore her from afar.
Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry is now streaming on Apple tv+ (Photos courtesy Apple tv+)