Piece by Piece - Review: Building a Different Kind of Documentary

 

Documentaries can easily be some of the most straightforward films to make. Just film some talking head segments, get some archival photos and video footage, and wrap it all up with narration and some pensive music. But Pharrell Williams doesn’t do straightforward apparently, and when crafting a documentary about his childhood and career with Oscar winning documentarian Morgan Neville (“20 Feet from Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”), he wanted to do something different. And a documentary animated entirely in LEGO style is certainly something different. 

The film follows Williams’s life growing up in Virginia Beach before breaking into the music industry by creating beats and producing music for numerous artists such as Snoop Dogg, Gwen Stefani, Pusha T, Jay Z, Justin Timberlake, and Busta Rhymes, among others. Eventually, Williams begins to fall into a creative slump before breaking out with his hit single “Happy” and becoming the more unique, creative singer he’s known to be today. 

While the idea of making a documentary in a LEGO animated style might seem like a gimmick at first, it quickly becomes apparent that it really is a stylistic choice that fits Williams’s creative ethos and the central thesis of the movie. It’s a choice that comes from the energy behind the film, not added on after the fact. It also allows for some gorgeous displays of animation and interpretation during some of the film’s most abstract moments. Even little details like showing two different cities coming together by physically pushing them together or showcasing Williams’s synesthesia throughout give the film more life than a standard documentary would have. There are numerous moments that border on psychedelic and help to bring everything to life, and even in the smaller moments, the LEGO aesthetic helps showcase the story in a lively manner. 

Separate from the animation, there is a lot of charm to be found in Williams’s tale and friends. While clearly sanitized a bit given the family-friendly LEGO aesthetic, there’s a lot of good-natured ribbing and laughter to be had amidst this showcase of musical creativity and self-love. There are even bits of introspection that seem remarkably humble, such as Williams’s not only allowing the film to fully go into his numerous failed business ventures and creative outlets, but also letting his collaborators and friends speak so frankly about those failed ventures. 

If there’s a weakness to the film, it's that despite its desire to be a way to showcase Williams’s admittedly inspiring personal thesis on creativity and the music industry, it ends up being a more surface level tale about his own career and upbringing. It certainly goes into plenty of detail, but there are also plenty of times where things are just skipped or glossed over, leading to a skin-deep kind of biopic feeling. The interstitials with his collaborators and friends do make up for a lot though. Even in their plastic LEGO forms, hearing them gush about working and growing up with Williams and his talents even at a young age is legitimately heartwarming and often times remarkably humbling. 

As one would expect, there are plenty of original songs here, and they’re all pretty fantastic; the title track in particular is yet another killer title track from Williams. The film’s large collection of musical hits helps to not only show the wide variety of tracks Williams had his hands in over the years, but also works in being authentic to their original material without stretching too far outside of the LEGO nature.  

“Piece By Piece” is certainly not like any other documentary or LEGO film to come before. Even that’s possibly because it feels less like a documentary and more like an animated showcase of an artist’s career and creative philosophy. Luckily, those talking animated heads who’ve come to play and talk about their friend are pretty charming, and the way the film utilizes the animated landscape to showcase emotional beats is something typical documentary elements couldn’t pull off. It could’ve used a narrative that went a bit deeper into its subject’s life, but there’s a lot to enjoy here, whether you’ve come for the music or the surprisingly inventive display of the creative process. 4/5

Joker: Folie à Deux – Review: The Joke Is On You

When any film makes a billion dollars, there’s a sequel on the horizon, regardless of how unique or singular that first film is. And Todd Phillip’s (“The Hangover,” “War Dogs”) twisted take on DC’s clown prince of crime is as dark and un-sequel-friendly as they come. But it made a billion dollars and won a few Oscars, so here comes “Joker: Folie à Deux”, sequel that’s bigger, bolder, more musical, and more morally ambiguous than ever before. 

The film picks up two years after the events of the first film as Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Pheonix (“Walk the Line,” “Beau is Afraid”), awaits trial for the murders he committed that inspired the riots across Gotham. While in Arkham Asylum, he meets Harleen Quinzel, played by Lady Gaga (“A Star is Born (2018),” “House of Gucci”), a fellow inmate who becomes obsessed with Arthur and his Joker persona. She inspires him to embrace his madness further, throwing his case into disarray for his lawyer Maryanne Stewart, played by Catherine Keener (“Being John Malkovich,” “Capote”), and guard at Arkham Jackie Sullivan, played by Brendan Gleeson (“Paddington 2,” “The Banshees of Inisherin”). 

The only somewhat pretentious sounding title “Folie à Deux” means “madness for two.” Phillips and his co-writer Scott Silver (“8 Mile,” “The Fighter”) certainly create a lot of madness, but it all feels wildly pointless by the end of the film. The first half of the film feels bizarrely aimless, just futzing around until the second half set in the courtroom starts. But even then, it results in a lot of surface level discussions about Arthur and his potential mental illness that Phillips and Silver literally end before any definitive statements can even be made. It’s a film that loves to drag a lot of rough subject material up from the depths without actually committing to making any kind of statements on said material. 

Pheonix is doing absolutely the best he can with much flimsier material, puttering around from scene to scene, making funny faces and talking with the slight high-pitched wilt that he crafted for the first film. It's a less compelling performance, but it never feels like it's his fault. Gaga is incredibly underutilized meanwhile. Her performance is fine enough, but the film simply does not know what to do with her after the first act, feeling content to have her pop up a few more times before disappearing completely. Keener is there and then gone, barely making an impact when she is being used, and Gleeson’s performance, while excellent, is buried in the film’s overtly cruel characterization of his role. 

While on paper, the film is building to the end of Arthur’s trial, the actual events and movement of the plot feels wildly unmotivated. Things just sort of happen and never feel as though they’re building to any sort of climax. The biggest thing that happens in the third act comes completely out of nowhere and serves as an excuse to avoid giving a direct statement on the film’s biggest central question. Even the scenes that follow feel so disconnected from that climax that it feels like they took place before the third act and just happened to get slotted into the end. It all feels pointless, like a film based around nihilism but not even in an interesting way. 

Meanwhile, the musical aspect feels even more pointless. While plenty of the scenes are well shot, the rest feel slotted in for no reason. They’re set in average locations, in the middle of other preexisting moments on a whim. But beyond the quality of the numbers or shots, they don’t add anything to the film as a whole. Whether they’re “in Arthur’s mind” or not, removing them from the film would change nothing about the plot or the film as a whole. They add nothing to the story and feel like the film’s most egregious bit of “prestige film” detail slathered upon a project undeserving of that kind of attention.

At least the film’s returning cinematographer Lawrence Sher (“Garden State,” “The Hangover”) shoots the film with the same gorgeous level of detail as before, crafting the best-looking version of these misguided ideas. Hildur Guðnadóttir (“Tár,” “Women Talking”) also returns to score the sequel after winning an Oscar for doing the same for the first. Her music still manages to be an evocative high point, but it’s too often drowned out by the film’s bizarre song choices and musical numbers.

So many of the elements within the film that, as previously stated, work on paper but not in practice, come off as not a mistake somewhere along the filmmaking process, but rather a middle finger to the prospect of the blockbuster industry. Make a sequel to a billion-dollar grossing incel-bait dark comic book movie? Sure, but let’s make it a courtroom drama-slash-musical with half the violence as before and a quarter of the plot. Can the lead character sing? Let’s just wing it and if he can’t, we’ll act like it’s an additional detail underneath all the artsy details we’re playing with.

The problem here isn’t that the film is slower or that Arthur’s singing is bad or that it doesn’t decide to commit to an answer to its central moral question. Plenty of films play with those kinds of aspects. The problem here is that the audience is paying the price, because it doesn’t feel purposeful. It feels like an accident being covered for, and it makes your audience have a worse time as a result. To put it in simpler terms: Arthur can be a bad singer, but he can’t be too bad or you’ll make the audience actually bemoan when he sings, otherwise you’re cutting off your clown nose to spite your face.

“Joker: Folie à Deux” will certainly be remembered for quite a long time, but the reason for that remembrance is almost a complete inverse of the first film. Despite Pheonix and Gaga trying their best while trapsing through a gorgeous looking film, Phillips has far too many heady ideas that never actually result in anything meaningful or compelling. Worse, he stretches it out, resulting in a slog of a film that acts as if it knows better than its audience, without ever stopping to think what it knows better about. It’s a fascinating film in how it fails, and one that could easily be dissected and discussed, but certainly not rewatched, for a long time to come. 1.5/5