In ordinary circumstances, I probably wouldn't have watched this. Though I like Billie when I've seen her interviewed previously, I'm not really a fan of the style of music she does. That said I enjoyed (though that sometimes "enjoyed" is slightly the wrong word) the film.
Split into two halves, the documentary follows the singer Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O'Connell as they produce her debut album "When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go". Her increased profile along with the immediate success of the album see her perform at the Cochella festival. The second half sees the stresses that touring the album has on her physical and mental wellbeing, before finishing with the albums sweeping success at the Grammy awards.
A documentary like this is entirely reliant on the access that the family are willing to provide the filmmakers and here they were allowed to see a lot of personal candid moments at home and footage from the kids growing up. Our central pair mess around trying to write the album, we see the breakdown of Billie's relationship with her boyfriend, lots of footage of the physical damage that Billie's high voltage performances have on her body, the mental stresses of travel and meeting randoms and trying to be earnest with people without spending every minute of your time hugging fans.
It's sad at times, and stressful, as you can see that she hasn't always been emotionally well at points in her life and the amount of stress that we put on performers, particularly in an age of social media, is something we really need to address. There's a lot of time spent with her parents, who homeschooled both their children and encouraged an interest in art, dance and music and who, at times, seem rightly worried about what the world, and in particularly, this world of musical acclaim, might do to their daughter.
Away from the specifics of the subject matter, the access that the filmmakers were given and the small narratives that manged to be pulled from several years of footage makes for an interesting and rewarding documentary.
