Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft
(USA, 114 min.)
Dir. James Cameron, Billie Eilish
Prod. James Cameron, Billie Eilish, Maria Wilhelm, John Brooks, Geoff Burdick, Paul Clarke, Maggie Baird, Justin Lubliner, John Janick, Steve Berman, Chelsea Dodson, Jason Owen, Michelle An
Billie Eilish sings about wanting to eat a girl for lunch, but no matter how much a hit single makes her tongue tingle, her hunger to perform seems insatiable. The young pop icon thrives in the arena. Her energetic concert documentary Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft makes clear that she’s a born performer. While it’s not nearly as revealing a portrait of the singer as R.J. Cutler’s 2021 doc Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, it captures the buzz that makes her a Gen Z mega-star, pop music hit-maker, role model, and more recently queer icon. As Eilish bops enthusiastically, runs laps around the stage, and croons her breathy vocals for an audience of screaming fans, the film captures the high enjoyed by both the singer and her enthusiastic crowd. It’s a fun theatrical experience that makes for moshing-in-the-aisles event cinema.
Hit Me Hard and Soft doesn’t break the mould for concert docs, but one must appreciate its eye for innovation. Eilish, who leads the creative vision for her tour, shares directing credit with blockbuster king James Cameron. They collectively have five Oscars between them, so one only needs to do the math to guess how well the film delivers in terms of spectacle and soundtrack.
All the hits appear in the documentary, fans will squeal while newcomers get a representative sampler. Her major hits “Birds of a Feather” and “Bad Guy” deliver solid beats, while her Oscar-winning Barbie anthem “What Was I Made For?” adds an emotional high note. For audiences who might wonder why Eilish commands such a level of fandom, the film offers a window into her effect on followers of her generation. The cameras look to the crowd almost as frequently as they focus on the stage, and there are Lonely Boy levels of adulation. Occasional cutaways provide testimonials from fans in the pre-concert queues. Admirers share how Eilish’s music helped them through dark times. Cutaways to histrionic devotees in the crowd exemplify the music’s therapeutic nature.
Especially fun behind-the-scenes footage shows Eilish interacting with fans on social media and IRL. After all, she’s a young person too, providing for others the experience that she’ll never really get through their eyes herself. There’s an undercurrent of sadness in this story of a girl whose only chance to breathe fresh comes when it’s safe enough to open a car window.
Cameron and Eilish may have been smarter to keep their eyes on the concert, however, and simply deliver a fully dimension performance. Hard and Soft develops a rhythm by cutting between concert footage and some more conventional documentary filler. Camera sits with Eilish in her hotel room and tosses her softball interview questions that speak to relatively obvious facets of her star status and experience. These moments come off as self-serving rather than introspective, especially since Eilish already opened up so much in the prior doc. She illuminates some aspects of herself, however, that invite viewers to appreciate her stage presence anew. She offers insights about fashion and dressing like a tomboy because she doesn’t feel comfortable in traditionally feminine clothes. This view also leads to her inspiration to jump up and down on stage to provide young women with a full metal rocker they usually don’t get.
The film introduces a lot of avenues with great potential that it doesn’t quite explore, but as a concert doc, it’s great entertainment. When it focuses on the show, Hit Me Hard and Soft rocks hard enough to win over a die-hard Swiftie or Beyoncé fan who already got their turns. Eilish and Cameron unite their visions for a souped-up 3D extravaganza. He uses her creative energy on the stage as a guiding light for shooting the film version with three-dimensional depth. It looks great and captures the liveliness of Eilish’s performance style. She jumps up and down on the stage like a headbanger and her eye for giving the show a vertical access suits the big screen well. Add some flashy lighting and a 3D cube that serves as on onstage platform/transitional device, and the film has enough moving parts for the 3D to be of service.
The added dimension really let’s Hit Me Hard and Soft sing by capturing the energy of fans. Hands spring into the foreground of the picture, creating something like the Lumière brothers’ Arrival of a Train effect in that it might have members of the audience jumping back to avoid being poked in the eye. The excitement proves infectious as one shares a sense of being among the crowd at the show. (The Toronto preview screening included a healthy mosh pit that ran for much of the show.)
Meanwhile, all those cellphones and lights illuminate how fans of Eilish’s generation experience life through screens. The film frequently frames the show with an eye for all the personal recordings of the concert that have to compete with Cameron’s 3D glasses. She’s having the time of her life while sharing herself with fans, and it’s hard not to grab a dose of Eilish’s medicine while enjoying the show.
Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft opens in theatres May 8.
