Piece by Piece (2024)
Directed by: Morgan Neville
Premise: A biographical documentary about musician Pharrell Williams told though animated Lego characters. Williams recounts his upbringing, love of music, and the course of his career.
What Works: The choice to make Piece by Piece an animated Lego feature gives the picture a whimsical and playful quality that suites Pharrell Williams’ music and the pitch of this story. The filmmakers are able to be surreal and the rhythms of the visuals have a musical quality. The Lego pieces also allow the filmmakers to visualize the beats that Williams and his associates manufactured for many musical acts.
What Doesn’t: Despite the Lego approach, Piece by Piece is an average music documentary not that different from any other talking head biography. This genre of career retrospectives is almost always self-congratulatory and serves to stroke the ego of the subject by reassuring the audience (and the artist) of the creator’s brilliance and cultural significance. That quality is laid on thick throughout Piece by Piece. The film constantly claims that Pharrell Williams is an extraordinary individual. While Williams has had an undeniably successful career, the film goes so far out of its way to mythologize Williams that it comes across conceited and self-absorbed. Music biographies like this are telling stories and Behind the Music-style documentaries and show business dramas such as Walk the Line and Ray usually adhere to a rags-to-riches-to-rehab formula. It’s predictable but that template gives those stories a dramatic shape. Piece by Piece doesn’t follow the formula—Williams seems to have avoided those pitfalls—but it doesn’t have any conflict either. Most of this film is a series of successes with little struggle or lessons learned. This does not make for a good story. Piece by Piece is flat and boring and the absence of conflict accentuates the film’s self-absorbed pitch. Piece by Piece contains a gross emphasis on money. In the absence of a dramatic struggle, the focus on Williams’ financial success comes across as bragging. This emphasis on money comes in contrast to the lack of any insight into Williams’ creative process. He’s been involved with some hit songs but as portrayed here, nothing Williams created had any personal stamp. His beats are just widgets. Piece by Piece acknowledges the way Williams merchandised his name and this film plays as a crass branding opportunity and little else. The use of Legos in Piece by Piece comes across not as a creative inspiration but as just another merchandising deal.
Bottom Line: Piece by Piece is a work of self-aggrandizement with no insight into music or Pharrell Williams’ life. Instead of raising his profile as an artist, it inadvertently puts Williams’ legacy into question. Rather than celebrating an artist, Piece by Piece is a monument to selling out.
Episode: #1022 (November 10, 2024)