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Pop star Eilish in "Happier Than Ever": New, transparent celebrity
Photo: Disney +
What happens when the currently greatest pop singer in the world shoots a concert film for the Disney + streaming service in Los Angeles? At the beginning, a blonde cartoon character with melancholy blue eyes pushes the door to the outside world and lands in the glaring light of day on the grounds of an old Hollywood studio. A Porsche convertible from the fifties is already ready, it is faded in over and over again in the course of the film in spherical sequences that show a deserted LA. He is the constant in the film, her only constant companion.
A little later, the real Billie Eilish stands on the real, iconic open-air stage of the Hollywood Bowl, on which Frank Sinatra and the Beatles have already performed, and sings the song "Getting Older", the opening track of her new album "Happier Than Ever". The unoccupied seats in the bowl protrude into the dark blue evening sky - that will not change in the next 65 minutes, the corona pandemic and its effects on concert operations continue. Again and again the directors Robert Rodriguez ("From Dusk Till Dawn") and Patrick Osborne (Oscar winner, best animated short film) show this vacuum that will soon be filled with real people. The concert film bears the title of the album, but with the programmatic subtitle "A love letter to Los Angeles".
No pop star today stands for a new generation that has identified the digital world as the only true home.
Her often-cited character
traits
are considered
hypersensitive, conscious,
woke
- 19-year-old Billie Eilish packs these traits into songs that are streamed millions of times.
With Corona, however, there was also a turning point in Eilish's career: the world tour had to be canceled in spring 2020, she and her brother Finneas used the free time and composed an album whose songs flow slowly, the beats have largely disappeared, the wild one, always The renewed outburst of their debut album "When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" was curbed, some critics even spoke of a successful old work. That was perhaps not inappropriate, because a few weeks earlier Eilish had been photographed in lingerie from the 1940s for Vogue, and with her new, blonde hair suddenly resembled the classic pop star Marilyn Monroe. Her famous look and unique selling point, the baggy pants, the black-green hair and the baggy shirts, were gone.
Declaration of love from the present
Now follows the declaration of love for Los Angeles, her hometown, but also a dream factory, a projection surface for the old Hollywood glamor, the traditional star system. Here, too, Billie Eilish stands for a new era: She is one of the most streamed artists in the world, at the same time the blueprint of a current star phenomenon, a new, transparent celebrity who communicates her fears and weaknesses with the outside world - »And nothing I do goes unseen «, it says at one point on their new album. Hollywood, however, is the place of once inaccessible heroines and heroes of a bygone screen spectacle that is increasingly losing influence in times of major streaming services like Netflix. Perhaps that is precisely why a declaration of love from the present is necessary - if only on "Disney +".
Eilish is not alone on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl at her solo concert; she and her brother, who accompanies her on guitar and keyboard, are joined by the orchestra of the Los Angeles Philharmonic; So the stage is full, and the contrast to the absent audience, which at best should be virtually present, is revealed in all clearness with every counter-cut. The wild dynamic of the conductor is in contrast to the singer, who sometimes sits on a stool, because the setlist - the album is played through in full - rarely requires Eilish to get up and hold her exuberant concert performance, which she has on festival stages in the past often performed exuberantly.
The static of the concert is broken up when the songs pause.
In alternation with the concert recordings, Eilish transforms into her blonde cartoon avatar and looks elegiacly into the LA dusk.
She drives her vintage car along Sunset Boulevard, she sees a huge billboard with her real likeness, in the background the "Hollywood Sign".
Later she walks like a dream through an old cemetery that is reminiscent of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video.
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Here they are immortalized, the old stars - and the latest heiress of all this glamor history visits them for a brief moment of pandemic-induced pause, she pays homage to the monument of western entertainment for a little more than an hour.
Whether out of wistful pity or out of genuine, deep admiration, this consideration is left to the viewer.
Billie Eilish's cartoon avatar enters the concert world of reality towards the end of the film, takes a seat and is thus the only (almost) present guest at the Hollywood Bowl. The fictional character has come to watch. The last words, however, belong to their real counterparts on stage and apply to the fans, who have to stay in front of their screens until further notice: "I hope we will all be able to see each other for real soon," says Eilish, very approachable from a distance .