What started off as the portrait of a teenage sensation on SoundCloud, turned, for director RJ Cutler and all involved, into a monstrous opportunity for a time-capsule-worthy documentary. Clocking in at 140 minutes, this film on musician Billie Eilish feels like an assortment of journal entries more than any sort of rising star story, and all the better for it. Filled with great music from her landmark 2020 album, “When we Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?,” what struck me most about the 18-year-old singer-songwriter was how just personal she wanted to get for this doc. The more we gradually watch Eilish’s popularity rise, from SoundCloud sensation to headlining Coachella, the more fascinating the film gets. Cutler also likes to focus on the mundanity of touring life; we see Eilish having had just about enough of the endless rounds of interviews, meet-and-greets, and promotional stops. Her screenwriter mother hears the brunt of the complaints, but her construction worker father is also there by her side and it’s that support system that is the most touching aspect of the film. It’s all edited in rather formless fashion by Cutler and that’s both the film’s strength and its greatest weakness. The narrative, filled with incisively fascinating vignettes, is rather unpredictable; you don’t know where the next scene will go due to the absence of a narrator and Cutler’s insistence to not adhere to any sort of chronological storytelling. Of course, when you have your main subject unafraid to expose her emotional scars on-screen, then you can really just let your camera roll. Eilish is that mesmerizing. She’s the first major superstar of her generation, a teenager we see coming of age in front our very eyes.
SCORE: B
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