James Cameron is the last gunslinger who knows what to do with 3D (at least until Ang Lee is released from Director Jail), although countless filmmakers — particularly of animation — continue to misrepresent its possibilities onscreen. Hoppers utilizes it as little more than a gimmick, justifying the ticket upcharge by tossing beavers in your face. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie gets a little closer to applying it effectively, using it to extend its world beyond the boundary of the screen (and, less constructively, as a cover for its incorrigible narrative poverty). Really, though, it’s just Big Jim C. tapping into the format’s full potential, weaving it into both his worldbuilding and his storytelling.
Billie Eilish is not at the vanguard of her respective medium like Cameron, but she is a strong pop vocalist, and perfectly deserving of the nepotism afforded her by her mother’s adjacence to Cameron in vegan circles around L.A. Perhaps inspired by his innovations in the 3D space as much as the greens on his plate, Eilish shares a directing credit with him on the concert film Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D), a credit which Cameron himself abdicates within minutes of the film’s opening. “I see this as your show — you are the architect,” he says. No really, “Directed by Billie Eilish with James Cameron,” he insists.
And yes, it’s difficult to shake the feeling Cameron loaned his tech to Eilish for two nights on her Hit Me Hard and Soft tour and let her have her way with it. A terrific performer she is — luminous, even, able to inhabit different personae while maintaining an essential Eilishness — but a filmmaker she is not. The 3D in Hit Me Hard and Soft is neither gimmick nor cover-up; it’s a total non-starter, creating depth only when Eilish poses just exactly right against the vast stadium or when an audience member reaches out to the camera. The use of HFR is a stronger draw, obliterating the line between spectacle and spectator and giving the film the feeling of having been created by a benevolent alien. But that alien also has no discretion: photographing the show with the ingenuity of an NFL broadcast, Cameron and Eilish mostly go for proscenium shots and the occasional desultory medium. There’s none of the innovation from Cameron’s Avatar films (unless you count one wide-angle close-up of Eilish drenched in a blue that resembles the hue of the Na’vi); instead, the film floats listlessly from song to song, cramming in cutaways to generic BTS footage assembled on the way to set in order to fill in some screen time.
During these BTS sequences, Cameron inserts himself as an insufferable, obsequious fan. He pitches softball questions at Eilish as he interviews her, and he gathers testimonials outside the venue that strike one as hagiographic and self-congratulatory. And it’s this that is perhaps Hit Me Hard and Soft’s greatest failure: the lightweight documentary pillow stuffing is not for a general audience, and it’s not even for the fans: it’s for Eilish. She gets space to pontificate about how meaningful her work is, demonstrate her work ethic by showing us her vocal warm-ups, and insist on her own humanity by displaying the leg braces she puts on before each show. But nothing that makes it to the screen properly celebrates her achievements for those who might care, nor adds to the experience of the concert in any meaningful way for the agnostics.
Yet, like the most interesting sounds in her music are on the margins of her production, so too do some genuinely artful moments emerge in Hit Me Hard and Soft — before they too disappear without a trace. Cuts to the Jumbotron above Eilish are genuinely scintillating, echoing the post-modern Gothicism of Evanescence, and Eilish, holding a small camera on stage, will often do some interesting camerawork herself: leaning over the camera, dropping it, and pointing it at the symbiotic, undulating mass of (mostly white) faces in the crowd.
The best concert films, however, alchemize good footage into something new, and the film becomes its own great work of art. Hit Me Hard and Soft clears the very low bar of making it seem like it was fun to be in the room, but it’s not a great work of art, and it’s beneath the pedigree of its creators — a fact they seem to know. The film even closes on a slow-motion shot of Eilish staring out the window of an Escalade looking at a strip mall in Phoenix, suggesting the spaces where her music is most often actually played. It’s the only truly honest image in the movie, and it promises a much better documentary beyond Eilish’s gilded cage at the center of the limelight. It’s a bold promise that will likely remain sadly unfulfilled.
DIRECTOR: Billie Eilish & James Cameron; DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount Pictures; IN THEATERS: May 8; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 54 min.
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