"This is It" was finally it.

I can't believe I'm posting this.

With the grotesque media explosion that followed Michael Jackson' death in addition to all the legal controversy and money being made from every possible aspect of his passing, I was not much interested in seeing the movie. The fact that it came out so quickly did little to assuage my skepticism. Even terrible movies take years to make. How could this hastily produced film possibly be anything other than a sham tribute and a thrown-together mess? And could I really participate in what I perceived to be a we're-not-even-gonna-bother-veiling-it plan to capitalize on his death (by Halloween, lest the buzz of death fade!)?

However, Dan put it best when he said if we were willing to travel to London for the concert (as we of course planned and did …except for the concert part), we can certainly travel to Newington (20 minutes away) to see the movie.

At best I thought it would be a trashy E! True Hollywood Story deal hyped with a promise of NEVER BEFORE SEEN FOOTAGE which would undoubtedly disappoint. I didn't expect to lose my breath listening to Michael Jackson sing Human Nature as I’ve never heard it before at the movie’s start. I didn't expect to be in something like pain as I saw what this concert would have been. I didn't expect to be overcome with gratitude that this footage was captured.

Rather than the ever-pervasive faux reverence and manufactured Ta-da! effect which I’ve grown to expect whenever anyone brings up MJ’s name, mercifully, the movie strips the story down. It husks and discards the thick layers of controversy surrounding his childhood and his adulthood; his life and his death. What is left is the story of a man. He is a musician, a dancer, an artist. His talent is Divine. His faith is not in art but is art itself, which enables (compels?) him to realize visions beyond the imaginable. He's taken lovers of music to this beyond. He was planning to take them there again with a 50-concert series in London during the summer of 2009. “This Is It” is only that; 40 hours of the rehearsal footage boiled down to the length of a feature film.

The movie is a look at how he does it; an artist's process. It is watching the work, the actual labor behind Michael Jackson’s brilliance. Songs like Billie Jean and Man In the Mirror weren’t just born out of him in perfect form. The movie shows him shaping his vision. It is watching Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel. It is seeing Shakespeare, pages crumpled on the floor, scratching out the words, “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”

While we’ve grown accustomed to pop stars held up by teams of talented producers, musical directors, vocal coaches, and choreographers, whose output is as much these artists’ as it is mine, Michael Jackson’s work is Michael Jackson’s. There is no Michael Jackson machine---a staff of musicians who arrange everything and he need only show up. He is the machine. Though the aforementioned team of players is present, MJ is the one running the show. In fact, many of these music professionals working by MJ’s side admit that Michael knows his music better than anyone and it’s their job to keep up. He gently leads his musical director to the perfect tempo and key. When concert director Kenny Ortega (who also directed the film as well as MJ’s Dangerous and History tours) asks Jackson how, without a visual cue, he will know when to start a song that is to begin after a film introduction, Jackson says he’ll “feel it” and both Ortega and the audience has every confidence that he will. It is so evident that he is a channel; obvious that he has a clear vision but must patiently and tenderly lead his cast of dancers and musicians through its execution. He is direct, but he is also humble and polite as those around him agree.

It is exhilarating to watch him work. He beat boxes his way to a perfect arrangement. When dancers half his age are out of breath after a particularly energetic dance segment, Jackson wants to try it again. 45 years of performing under his belt and Jackson emphasizes the importance of rehearsal. (Is Britney Spears doing that?) From the look of it, the concert would have been incredible. Amazingly elaborate sets and 3-D technology. Accompanying films for Smooth Criminal and Thriller (the latter of which would have had Michael emerging on stage from the belly of a giant spider). Dancing that, even in this day of dance programming on every channel, I had never before seen. (When bits of this footage first started airing---a clip of him rehearsing “They don’t care about us” with dance steps drawn out in such a way so as to appear like MJ and his dancers are in slow motion--- I felt the deep throb of the loss of this concert I never saw.)

Michael says more than once that he is doing it “for love.” The work is all “for the love.” In an age where artistry is often second to celebrity, it is great to hear an artist of this magnitude still doing it for “the love.” Certainly reports have said that this concert series was MJ’s ticket out of financial ruin, but one need only watch this film to see that art, not money, was Michael’s driving force. Money is not fuel enough for what he was planning to do.

One of the most interesting parts of the film is watching Jackson’s transition from the shy and awkward man the world is used to into the self-assured man who becomes him when the music starts. His posture changes. His walk strengthens. He hears one note and he's in it. He can't help himself. His shoulders broaden, he grows taller. (I was shocked by how tall he seemed despite my knowing he was only around 5’10.) I’ll even say this: There is sexuality there. Like most great musicians and performers, there is passion and sensuality. There is a confidence that even I had forgotten Michael had.

Though the movie certainly depicts talent as close to magic as we’ve ever seen, I hesitate to call it a "celebration of his life," that red bow of a phrase with which exploitation is often wrapped. Did it allow me, a life-long fan, to celebrate him? Certainly. But it allowed others in the audience to snicker at his perfectionism; to laugh at the way his body contorts, how it throws him around the stage even as he only half-sings a song during rehearsal. (The power and energy that runs through him seems so strong at times that it pulses through his body causing even his wrists to buckle and his hands to flail into dance.) A less enamored eye than mine might have interpreted his “saving” his voice during run-throughs or his stopping mid-song to firmly explain how a certain pause must be held (in order for it to "sizzle,") as prima donna-esque. (I saw it as an artist’s commitment to himself, to his tool, to the music, to his fans.) In the film, Ortega is not showing a good or a bad side, just Michael Jackson at work.

I saw the movie on a night in which I was particularly consumed with doubt and it was absolutely restorative. It is nourishment for any artist or any person with a goal. With everything that has transpired in his career and life over the last 15 years, I was grateful to be able to feel what I first felt when I listened to Michael Jackson. His ballads are soul piercing and evoke a sense of togetherness and love and respect for the earth that were so much more accessible to me as a kid. Watching this movie I was transported the way I used to be while listening to him. I felt the hopefulness I used to know so well; when it all seemed as simple as talking to the man in the mirror in order to heal the world.

This Is It would be no less relevant, no less powerful, had Michael Jackson lived. Save a brief scroll of words at the movie's start, were MJ alive, the film could stand as is. It is the story of This Is It, the concert, without the tragic ending. But of course, outside the theater, the ending is tragic. The Michael Jackson principle dancers, a handful of gorgeous and exuberant young men and women who cheered at the foot of the stage during MJ’s rehearsals, lived their dream but only to a point. Dan and I never saw the concert (and gawd, did it look like it was going to be incredible). And the world never got to see Michael Jackson’s comeback.

I’m not so naïve that I’m unaware of the forces other than art that were at work in Michael’s life. A life has many influences. But it was nice for those two hours to see only his musical genius depicted because before anything else---before his death, before the drugs, before the scandals, before the Grammys, before Thriller, before Motown, before he was a five-year-old frontman for his brothers, he was art. He was born art.