Several years ago singer/songwriter/producer/musician/fashion icon/designer Pharrell shared an idea with Morgan Neville. Neville, the Oscar-Winning documentarian behind 20 Feet From Stardom, has helped redefine the way a non-fiction film can tackle a subject as nebulous as musical creation and the culture that surrounds it. From artists as diverse as Yo-Yo Ma, Johnny Cash, Keith Richards and Muddy Waters, he also has crafted films about such iconoclastic figures as Anthony Bourdain, Orson Welles and Mr. Rogers that go well beyond simple hype, diving deeply into both their works and their character, and finding through the means of cinema something more rich than a biography, more lush than a simple portrait, and more profound than a mere puff piece.
So it’s no surprise, then, that the likes of Pharrell would look to Neville to help tell his story. The surprise, of course, is that it would be done in the form of a LEGO movie. The bigger surprise, however, is how brilliantly that gambit paid off with Piece by Piece. Laying my bricks on the table, I’m a LEGO lunatic, not only an avid collector of sets back to my earliest childhood, but a film critic completely charmed by the spate of films starting out with the 2014 Lord and Miller production. Of course, The Lego Movie was a laudable origin story, detailing a hero’s journey as he overcame limitations, saw his unique imagination finally embraced, and thanks to a series of collaborators who learned to join forces, found his true calling.
This kind of Campbellian arc is toyed with in Neville’s telling, using the tropes of this kind of structured adventure storytelling to not only contextualize his subject’s success, but also to help visualize what otherwise would remain somewhat esoteric. A major component of Pharell’s response to music is his synesthetic condition, where, like a small percentage of the population, he can quite literally “see” sounds as a series of colors, the frequencies responding in his mind with a kaleidoscopic flourish. What a perfect mode, then, to have brightly colored bricks, swirling in space and evolving with the music, to help evoke the very feeling of music for this highly successful creator.
‘Piece by Piece’ Is a Visual Treat
This helps make Piece by Piece not only a compelling story, but a visually sumptuous one. It’s far more than a mere childish plaything but a more profound telling of this tale. The designs of each participant are delightfully rendered in their minifig form, providing such an earned playfulness to what’s traditionally a rather dull process of the “talking head” interview. Digging a bit deeper, Neville manages to use the medium of the LEGO movie to quite literally piece elements together, mixing audio interviews, recreations of documentary footage both archive and contemporary, and even flights of imagination within this flexible system. Like with any animated film, the structure was locked in editorial years ago, with the process of animation justifiably taking time. That allowed the filmmaker and his collaborators a rare thing indeed, the added time for a specific kind of visual refinement, a frame-by-frame precision rarely if ever granted to a documentary.
While the likes of Gwen Stefani, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar and Snoop Dogg appear as themselves the way they would in just about any other music doc, here their own reminisces are sketched out in kinetic ways, crafting something that’s a fabulous collision between the silly and the sublime. Not every story is glowing about Pharell, and some of his missteps are articulated in ways that refuse to shy away from the truth. At the same time, this is very much focussed on Pharell finding the means to tell the story his way, with Neville allowed within that structure to make the movie his own.
To this point, while some of the more challenging aspects of Pharell’s journey such as the “Blurred Lines” controversy are left for other filmmakers to explore, and it’s clear there’s a feeling of joy expressed through much of the film, there’s never a sense that this is a mere moment for hagiographical celebration. It’s easy to dismiss this entire endeavor as hubristic to the extreme sight unseen, yet even this non-fan was wowed by the sheer breadth of how he has helped shaped the last decades of pop music. It’s a film clearly makes the argument for the importance of having this story told.
‘Piece by Piece’ Is as Rich as Any Documentary Portrait
Ironically, it’s through the use of the medium of a LEGO movie that audiences are granted a greater sense of reality and a deeper dive into the ideas at play. Through this unique approach, we’re taken directly into what Pharell and his fellow participants are attempting to verbally express, finding ways to actualize the ephemeral through this flight of fancy. What was particularly wild was that, towards the end of the film, I actually almost forgot what I was watching was a bunch of caricatures walking around brick-built streetscapes. I was sucked into this telling so strongly that it simply felt to be as rich and rewarding as any top-notch doc.
It’s unlikely that we’re soon to be treated to a slew of LEGO-oriented works of non-fiction, nor can too many subjects warrant this kind of blockbuster aesthetic to be applied to their own journey. This makes this film feel particularly special, akin to getting away with something quite wonderful, granting a master storyteller the means and the mode to tell with both creative and formalist freedom the story of his subject. In turn, Pharell is given another mode to reflect his aesthetic vision, incorporating not only his musical journey but his spiritual one as well.
Fans of Pharell will be in for a delight, of course, but what’s most effective about the general structure of the film is how it goes well beyond a need to have a predisposed adoration for the subject. There are bigger questions at play here, and never once does it succumb to either feeling didactic or maudlin. And so, bit by bit, Neville’s take on Pharell’s story is constructed to be something quite special, a wonderful synergy between subject and form, showing a new way of using the modes of documentary, animation, storytelling and musical creation to craft something colorful, and something wonderful. It’s a film that’s serious about play, and humble about the need for joy. Piece by Piece is, quite simply, bricktacularly brilliant.
Piece by Piece screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. It comes to theaters in the U.S. starting October 11. Click below for showtimes near you.
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