Music Goes to the Movies

 Any star is an unknowable quantity, one from whom we expect distance but crave intimacy -- it’s the paradox that drives the star-making industry. With our pop stars, we literally can’t get enough: we flock to flawed films, hungry for a glimpse of the “true” person behind the persona. We’ve watched Bette Midler channel Janis Joplin (sort of) in “The Rose,” Elvis remain himself even when he should be acting (just about any film), U2’s self-aggrandizing at the dawn of its career in “Rattle and Hum,” Madonna playing herself in both fiction (“Desperately Seeking Susan”) and documentary (“Truth or Dare”). The latest in line? Michael Jackson, who’s drawn a flood of viewers to the posthumously released rehearsal doc “This Is It,” which topped the box office last weekend.

“This Is It” doesn’t fit easily into any musical film category. It sets itself up as nonfiction; no actor plumbs the lurid rumors that dogged Jackson for years before his death, a la Bette Midler in “The Rose.” Nor does MJ “act” the way Elvis did in star vehicles like “Blue Hawaii” (though there is an odd sequence for “Smooth Criminal” in which MJ is green-screened into the Humphrey Bogart film “Gilda”). Yet Elvis and MJ share a certain quality: they only come alive in performance. In “Blue Hawaii,” Elvis was rarely more than a cardboard cutout, a smiling presence who delivered his few lines with a self-consciousness that was painful to watch. But when the music started, that affable glaze evaporated, and the King’s vital force took over. The thrill came in the moment when he transformed from untalented actor to the rocker who left us shaking in our shoes. The same thing happens when MJ begins to rehearse in earnest: his dancing during “Billie Jean” or the final moments of the ballad “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” will give you chills.