In a rather unexpected team-up, alt pop superstar Billie Eilish and visionary Avatar director James Cameron are bringing the snappily-titled Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) to cinemas this weekend.
Shot last year during her seventh concert tour, this dual effort has been billed by its trailers as a bit of a behind-the-scenes documentary, but the film itself is much more focused on one single performance: the night Eilish played Manchester.
This isn’t Eilish’s first foray into concert films with unwieldy titles – she previously released Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles and Billie Eilish: Live at the O2 – but this is her first time working in the 3D market. It was Cameron’s idea to incorporate this new element into the project, which will come as a shock to nobody, given that the man seems to be the last bastion of hope for the format. I feel like the only time I put 3D glasses on anymore is when I’m about to venture back to Pandora to fly more giant multicolour bats with the Navi, but as a child of the 2000s, I can still appreciate the slight novelty of 3D, even if it’s something that the greater film landscape seems to have swapped out in favour of 4DX and gigantic IMAX screens.
‘I wanna be the artist that I would wanna be a fan of’
Its inclusion here promises a concert experience like no other (as much as I love him, Cameron seems incapable of doing anything in half measures) but, as stated directly in the film itself, this is a Billie Eilish production first and foremost, with Cameron positioning himself as little more than a helping hand along the way. While Hit Me Hard and Soft doesn’t reinvent the genre quite as much as it would have you expect, you do feel as if you’re in Eilish’s hands rather than anyone else’s, with Cameron, as promised, taking the backseat and not letting his influence spill over too much.
An early scene sees Eilish emerge from a gigantic, bright white box, entirely surrounded by screaming fans in the crowd. It’s an impressive sight – like some kind of alternate Mecca for ravenous, TikToking teenagers – but things get even better when we rewind back to a behind-the-scenes conversation with Billie, her team and Cameron for insights into how that exact spectacle was put together.
It’s moments like these that really hammer home the specificity of Eilish, not just as a performer but as a creator in her own right. Cameron, too, has found a comfortable niche for himself as first mate to his baggy jumper-wearing captain – much more concerned with what he can do to assist her vision rather than taking the limelight to paint his own picture. It’s great to see Eilish giddily suggest that they get a POV shot of her in the box itself while it’s being wheeled in and then, immediately after, see that vision fulfilled on-screen.
That tactile sense of causality carries us nicely through the picture as a whole. I took real issue with Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC when it released in March, largely for the way in which Luhrmann seemed determined to jump from sentimental expository sequences, then into Elvis’ live performances and back again. It was experimental, yes, but experiments can fail, and that one felt like pure whiplash, insisting on incorporating far too much to the point of distracting from the meat and potatoes of the concert footage itself.
Eilish and Cameron have made no such mistake here – instead, there’s a satisfying simplicity to the storytelling at play. Song. Interlude. Song. Interlude. In one instance, we see Eilish open up about her struggles with body image and the way that pop stardom (as a female artist) seems to be inherently, inexplicably tied to sexuality. There’s a brief moment of reflection before, fantastically, we move on to ‘What Was I Made For?’, Eilish’s Oscar-winning song written for 2023’s Barbie. The film doesn’t have the dizzying ambition of Luhrmann’s attempt, but it’s far easier to follow and sympathise with. There’s a confidence to the basic premise, too, with Cameron championing his central star and Eilish herself knowing that she is what fans have paid to see – be it live in concert, as it was in Manchester, or here in the cinema.
The songs and performances themselves are energetic and eye-catching. Eilish has been a big name in her field for nearly a decade, now, and it’s been years since I was an avid fan, but the quality of her songwriting and her unique sense of style so no signs of a decline.
In fact, this was an entertaining watch for me, enticing me early into the runtime with some of her more recent work before bringing out the legacy bangers in the second half. While her renditions of ‘Guess’ and ‘bad guy’ put a big grin on my face, I’ve been surprised at how many songs from her latest album have played on loop in my head since seeing the film at a Monday preview. The massive turnout of fans at the screening seemed to thoroughly enjoy their time with it, too, singing along in code-breaking yet charming fashion.
Eilish is an incontrovertible star on-stage, giving everything she has to each and every number. This energy is given back to her by her audience, with the film seemingly trying to top the record for ‘Concert Film With the Weepiest Fans’, consistently cutting away to teary-eyed teens of all genders. It’s the sort of thing that makes you chuckle at first, but as Hit Me Hard and Soft progressed, showing interviews with fans whose outlooks have been changed for the better by Eilish’s music, I actually felt it justified the slight deification of its central figure in a much more palatable (a far less aggrandising) way than Michael, which is still haunting a cinema near you.
While Cameron’s Avatar films manage to justify their 3D ambitions with sheer, awe-inspiring spectacle and an immersive world, the inclusion of 3D here feels much more like a marketing tool than anything of real weight. I often forgot about it entirely, outside of a few moments where Eilish interacts directly with the camera, playing up her presence on-stage.
In fact, having the glasses on feels detrimental, at times, given the desaturation that comes with viewing the image through a grey-filtered lens. Eilish explicitly states early-on that she tries to give each song its own all-encompassing colour to really propel the audience into the atmosphere of each number, and those colours are slightly dulled when seen in this format. I took the glasses off for a while and enjoyed the way they popped on-screen – it was far more eye-catching, and though I know the studio won’t do it, I would love to watch it again in a 2D cinema release.
It’s not a concert movie that will change the world by any means – some of the interludes land better than others, though some become clearer as the film goes on – but Hit Me Hard and Soft is an extremely capable, well-performed two hours.
I came into it having not listened to Eilish’s music in earnest in about five years and yet it was impossible not to find myself getting drawn back into that culture. If there’s anyone in your life who really lives and breathes her music, I think this could be an absolute home run at the movies for them.
BBFC: Rated 12A for infrequent strong language, moderate sex references.
Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) is in cinemas now.
