It’s impossible to imagine a pop star more distinct, more famous, yet more deserving of her stardom right now than Billie Eilish. At the tender age of 24, she’s already won numerous Grammys, scored several number one hits, and even snagged an Oscar (for a Bond theme song, no less!) before she was barely old enough to drink. And yet, for all her youthful vulnerability, she feels already so fully-formed: her shrugged-off rap-star aesthetic, the brilliantly layered ballads she co-writes with brother Finneas O’Connell, and, as the concert doc “Hit Me Hard and Soft” shows us, true skill as a show designer and filmmaker. Granted, she gets a little help in the form of an up-and-coming indie upstart by the name of James Cameron, and the decades of innovation he’s done in 3D filmmaking up to this point. But don’t get it twisted: This is Eilish’s show, and she knocks it out of the park.
Shot over several nights on the Manchester stop of Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft tour (the highest-grossing tour of any 21st-century artist to date), “Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour” feels like a true collaboration between one of our youngest pop artists and our oldest, most venerated filmmaker. The two-hour event feels as much like a chronicling of Eilish’s electric concert as it is a celebration that she (and Cameron) did the damn thing in the first place: The opening shot features a time-lapse of the gargantuan set being thrown together day-of in the cavernous Co-op Live arena, before the lights go out and the seats fill with tens of thousands of screaming fans. (The cameras don’t shy away from the fact that virtually everyone is, too, recording this event with their smartphones. They may capture their own memories of this place, but it won’t look like this.)
And to be clear, “Hit Me Hard and Soft” is designed for the biggest screen you can find. From the first notes, Cameron’s 3D and Eilish’s stagecraft surround you in the exuberance of the set’s opening numbers, as Eilish appears in the middle of a floating white cube in her signature streetwear (athletic jerseys, basketball shorts, baseball cap, the dressed-down aesthetic that sets her apart—deliberately, as she tells us in interviews midway through—from her sexpot peers). Once she’s up, though, she’s off to the races, strutting and bouncing from one end of the enormous four-quadrant stage to another, cameras tracking her fluidly as she plays each corner of her crowd. Diminutive she may be, Eilish’s stage presence is no less commanding, and it’s a fist-pumping delight to see her jump and wink her way through tracks like “CHIHIRO” and “LUNCH” from the titular 2024 album.
To break up the pace of the concert, Eilish and Cameron hop back in time every so often for some day-of behind-the-scenes shenanigans, whether it’s to reveal how a certain magic trick was accomplished (including sneaking her to her opening mark in an equipment crate) or to have Cameron sit down with her on a couch to ask her questions, talking-head style. It’s in these moments that the division of labor feels most exquisitely collaborative; while Cameron has produced concert docs in the past, he feels genuinely excited to work with a young artist so distinctly herself as Eilish. We see Billie scribbling on her Notes app, collaborating with Cameron on shots. He clearly defers to her, sitting in as an elder statesman, someone with the technology and the know-how to execute someone else’s vision. “The credits are gonna read, ‘Directed by Billie Eilish’, and then in small print below, ‘and James Cameron,'” he jokes to her early on. It feels like humble flattery, but the longer the set goes on, the more genuine it feels.
The combo of Eilish’s stagecraft and Cameron’s filmmaking tools makes for a simply electrifying concert experience. The 3D is immersive but not ostentatious, preferring to surround you with the scale of the place rather than poking things at the screen. For some tracks, Eilish picks up a portable 3D camera, points it at herself and the audience, then throws it on the floor and stands over it as she sings. It’s one of many powerful tools the pair use to give her already delicate tracks outsized heft, from the fuck-you headbangers of “bad guy” to the tender interiority of “when the party’s over” (in which Eilish, sitting on the floor of the stage, asks her packed house for one minute of silence to record those iconic looped vocal harmonies). The visual tricks are fun, but the focus largely stays on the flow of the concert—we’re witnessing Eilish work from the vantage point of a fan with just a tidge more backstage access, which is invigorating.
If you’re looking for a straightforward spectacle featuring some of your favorite Billie Eilish songs, you’ll get it here. Luckily, we also get at least a little more of the woman behind the artist, even if it feels a bit curated. We see glimpses of her struggles with show injuries (she’s long had problems with shin splints and sprained ankles), heartfelt couchside confessions about the stresses of being a female artist in this landscape, and even a “puppy room” with local shelter dogs, which is evidently a ritual for each of her shows. (“Everyone needs some dog love,” she beams while surrounded by pups.) It’s hardly the kind of deep dive into her personal life that R.J. Cutler’s “Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry” was, but it’s more than we typically expect of this kind of concert doc.
More than anything, though, “Hit Me Hard and Soft” feels like an ode to Eilish’s fanbase, who get plenty of screen time near the end to talk to the cameras about how much her music means to them. In some ways, it’s the typical fangirling you could expect of any Top 40 artist, but considering the outsider nature of Eilish’s key demographic—we see all kinds of young women and queer people with all manner of presentations—it’s harder to dismiss these as the frivolous gushing of undiscerning teens.
It’s the same for Eilish, too; this doc seems as much of a love letter to her fans as it is to her own success, both of which, of course, are intertwined. “I want to be the kind of artist I would be a fan of,” Eilish tells Cameron in one of their couchside Q&As. “Hit Me Hard and Soft” is proof positive that she is living that dream, not just as a songwriter and artist but as a live performer. And, if this kind of ambitious vision is any indicator, she has a hell of a visual eye; it’s hands-down one of the best concert films of recent vintage.
