You remember where you were the night Michael Jackson did the moonwalk on Motown 25. That moment, like so many from his career, did not need any explanation. You just watched and felt it.
A new documentary is betting that the footage still speaks for itself. Michael Jackson: A Life in Music opens in theaters on August 29 and runs two hours and nine minutes.
What makes it different from everything else that has come out lately is simple: there are no actors, no dramatized scenes, and no talking-head interviews. The film relies entirely on archival material.
The story it tells starts with the Jackson 5, young Michael performing alongside brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Randy. From there it traces the solo career that produced Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad, and the stadium concerts that followed.
The archival footage also brings together many of the familiar faces from his world. Diana Ross, Quincy Jones, and Stevie Wonder appear, as do television names our generation knows well: Ed Sullivan, Carol Burnett, and Barbara Walters. The film is listed as a French production.
This film arrives after a busy stretch of Jackson projects. The dramatized biopic Michael, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jaafar Jackson as his uncle, became a major box-office success but drew criticism for how it handled the abuse allegations that followed Jackson for years. His daughter Paris publicly dismissed parts of it as pure fantasy. A Netflix docuseries also revisited his 2005 trial, in which he was acquitted.
An all-archival film offers something those recreations cannot. It puts Jackson back on screen as himself, at every age, on every stage, in every era you remember him from.
Whether it addresses the more complicated parts of his story remains to be seen. But for anyone who grew up watching those performances, August 29 is a date worth putting on the calendar.
