Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry: 7 of the most powerful moments from RJ Cutler’s documentary
RJ Cutler’s documentary uses three year’s worth of footage from the singer’s life
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Your support makes all the difference.Billie Eilish’s new documentary, The World’s a Little Blurry, has been released on Apple TV+.
The project from director RJ Cutler follows the first three years of the multiple Grammy-winning “Bad Guy” star’s music career, and also includes clips and photos from her childhood.
While Eilish herself has confirmed the documentary leaves a lot out, as she grew up watching celebrity documentaries and didn’t want the world to know everything about her life, it does include several moving revelations.
Among them are her living with Tourette Syndrome, that she had a boyfriend whom she managed to keep private during her rise to fame, and her struggles with physical injuries amid a gruelling tour around the world.
Here are some of the most moving moments of the documentary.
Billie’s relationship with her brother Finneas
The older-brother-younger-sister relationship is a sacred thing, proven by the touching footage of Finneas and Billie working on music together in his bedroom. Finneas is frequently shown to be patient, even as Billie is full of doubts about her abilities. Despite their obvious seriousness about their music, though, they still find time to be siblings, laughing and swapping in-jokes and secret handshakes.
Billie’s struggles with Tourette’s
While Billie confirmed she lives with Tourette’s Syndrome in 2018, she hasn’t spoken about it so much in public. In the documentary, you see her frequently becoming frustrated by flair-ups, which appear to be exacerbated by her exhaustion from live shows. She also suffers from physical injuries, and is shown forcing herself to perform despite being in visible pain.
Billie’s incredible imagination
Particularly during the early stages of the documentary, audiences get to see Billie looking through some of her diaries, which are littered with drawings, poems and ideas for lyrics. While some of the content written when she was struggling with depression is more troubling, other moments show her to have a wonderfully vivid and curious mind. Perhaps even better is the fact that her family always encourages her creativity, even when her ideas might seem “weird”.
Billie’s boyfriend – and the breakup
One of the biggest surprises is learning Billie had a boyfriend – singer Q – whom she managed to keep private from the world as she shot to global fame. However, it can be distressing to see Billie worrying about her relationship during pivotal moments in her career, like her debut performance at Coachella Festival. She later comes to terms with this, and explains to her friends that it played a part in her decision to end the relationship.
Her mother’s concern for her
During the documentary, Billie’s family are frequently in the picture as they also accompany her on tour. While this is common knowledge and her mother has spoken at length about her desire to protect Billie, seeing her discuss her concerns on-screen is particularly moving. “You can’t pay someone to do that,” she says, of making sure Billie is safe at all times.
Billie has off-days
That might sound obvious – we all suffer from bad days. But the point of this particular scene, which comes around two-thirds of the way through the documentary, is that Billie is made to feel as though she cannot have a “blip” while in public. The incident takes place during a backstage meet-and-greet with label executives, where an exhausted Billie is expected to take a string of photos with people she doesn’t know. She understandably becomes frustrated and wants to leave, but her mother encourages her to continue. Later, Billie reads a social media post from a fan accusing her of being “rude” during the meet-and-greet, which upsets her. It’s a difficult moment, as her mother admits she and the team “messed up”, while Billie is frustrated by the expectation that she can never have an off-day.
Seeing Billie for who she is
While Billie recently told Stephen Colbert that she found her younger self in the documentary “annoying”, it’s admirable that she and Cutler don’t try to paint her in a more mature light during the early stages of her career. You get to see her having the odd teenage strop, or getting excited about her driver’s licence. The point is: while Billie is clearly extraordinarily talented, she is still a teenager. It’s reassuring to know that her family is around to protect her.
Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry is out now on Apple TV+
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