This Is It (2009)

 

The Man in our Mirror

About halfway through the movie I started to feel it, a gentle tug that became more insistent until I slowly lost myself in a sea of memories and quiet sadness. For people of a certain age, Michael Jackson is synonymous with adolescence. For us, he was more than a pop star. He was the closest thing we had to a global celebrity, a living Truman before the internet revolution decreed that every celebrity's life would be lived under continual scrutiny. From the stories of his childhood abuse to his culture changing stardom, from icon to iconoclast, Michael Jackson was an enduring presence in our cultural consciousness.

Until the past decade. Somehow, we needed the absence. Needed the separation. With the distance, however, something happened. Jackson the pop star was buried and raised to the place we assign former icons who no longer hold sway in pop culture, a living historical figure. This Is It was to be his comeback, his last chance to become that star again. His untimely passing, however, prevented us from seeing what that would have been like, from witnessing his final show.

And what a show it might have been.

The movie is compiled footage from his tour preparation, and cut in a manner to be, in effect, a concert for the viewer. A few more interviews would have given the narrative a bit more propulsion, and there are places where the film sags, but Jackson's star power is never in question. With his translucent white skin and sunglasses balanced over a porcelain face, he seems more a ghost than a fifty year old man. His voice is still crisp, and his creative vision is astounding. From the half finished clips we see in the film, it's easy to predict that This Is It would surely have been one of the greatest (and most expensive) shows of all time.

Mostly though, it isn't Michael the performer that holds you, it's the force of the memories dancing along inside you when he sings Thriller and Man in the Mirror. It's the soft, childish platitudes he mutters to his crew that strangely fill you with hope and the love his dancers and fellow musicians genuinely hold for him.

It's easy to be critical of Michael Jackson. Easy to call him Wacko Jacko or a creep (if you believe the rumours), but for four decades he lived in front of us, creating moments forever embedded in our memories of times past. Moments we recall twenty years later that remind us who we were back then, and in so doing, help us see more clearly what we have become.

More than his musical and creative genius, his dominance of pop culture was the result of his ability to help us look in the mirror and to do so in a manner untainted with cynicism. Michael Jackson was not a saint, nor was he just another celebrity sinner. He was, in a strange way, the perfect reflection of our ideals and failures, an adult of great charity and a child who never grew up. And in that, he was just like us.

***** (Out of five) For the memories
***1/2(Out of five) For the film