Knock on Wood

Like many filmgoers, when I heard that a Pharrell Williams documentary was in the works from Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?), I was curious. But when the game-changing announcement – that the film would be done with LEGO animation – came, I was dubious and even more skeptical.

I don’t consider myself any more musically literate than the average enjoyer of tunes, but I know Pharrell. Everyone does. How could you forget his Despicable Me 2 earworm “Happy,” which took the world by storm in 2013? But if there’s one thing that this documentary, Piece by Piece, taught me, it’s just how much influence Pharrell really had in the music of the 21st century.

Piece by Piece begins with the multi-hyphenate (singer/songwriter/producer, among others) sitting down for an interview with Neville, and in a dramatized scene, declares he wants the movie done in LEGO. That choice opens more doors than I ever thought possible – though Pharrell’s life story is your standard rise/fall/revival tale you see all the time in music biopics, there’s an endearing authenticity to the choice of bringing it to life in the most imaginative way possible. It not only makes the story more exciting, but injects a healthy amount of color and vivacity in a way that is clearly near and dear to Pharrell’s heart.

And it’s a true visual feast; not only does Piece by Piece have the most impressive LEGO animation I’ve ever seen, but it very quickly distinguishes itself from the other LEGO movies by focusing on visual representations that couldn’t exist in a standard documentary. We see young Pharrell take up the drums in school, meet his future producing partner Chad Hugo in band class, form a band called the Neptunes, working with Gwen Stefani, Snoop Dogg, and Jay-Z…but we also see him meet a gigantic manifestation of Carl Sagan in space and literally drown in his own mistakes. The LEGO animation visualizes metaphors, but it can also travel through time. It can show us events and meetings that don’t exist in photo or video form, and it can bring to life everything Pharrell and the other interviewees have inside their heads.

My favorite of these visualizations is how Pharrell’s beats, his lifeblood during his producing days, are shown as living, moving organisms with different shapes and colors. These are inspired by Pharrell’s self-confessed synesthesia, which is brought to life in a marvelously inventive way on-screen. It’s one of the strongest ideas the movie has and somehow grounds the movie through its fantastical nature.

Piece by Piece has a lot to say about the creative journey – the benefit of hindsight is on Pharrell’s side, and director Morgan Neville appearing on-screen as the audience surrogate anchors our point of view – but in this case, the story itself doesn’t matter. It all comes down to how it’s told. In Pharrell’s world, everything is buildable, and there is unlimited potential in what you can make of your life. Here, the lack of control that might be a roadblock for a traditional documentary (camera placements, lack of archival footage, even the color of the wallpaper in an interviewee’s house or studio) is replaced by limitless creative choices that open the doors for a wealth of intentionality. Neville said he hoped to bring the vocabulary and grammar of documentary into animation, and that’s his biggest success as a filmmaker – he proves that the two can work together and make each other better, instead of being at odds.

Afterward, I turned to Knock on Wood contributor Davis Mathis and we both expressed how, despite our (let’s be honest, my) doubts were not only proven to be unfounded, but this is the only way the film could have been – a standard Pharrell doc, in the style of Neville’s work on Mr. Rogers, Anthony Bourdain, and Steve Martin, could have been somewhat interesting, but the LEGO-ness of it all elevates it beyond a life story. It becomes a vibrant, existential, cosmic tale with excellent visual gags, toe-tapping musical numbers, and the most visual freedom I’ve ever seen afforded to a doc. This is the first of its kind – there is nothing quite like it, and I doubt there will be anything quite like it for a long time. But who knows, my doubts were proven wrong last night. They may yet be disproven again. When you see a movie that is as excited to exist as Piece by Piece, it feels like anything is possible.

Piece by Piece opens in theaters on October 11.