Disclaimer: This is a review, and as such will contain opinions, spoilers and (often) general shit talking. (If you talk about what you don’t like about a work, you learn a lot. When you think through a work with the stakes presented to you by the creator, by the context of the work, you learn a lot. I review things, not because I love to dislike things, but because dislike contains rich and vital information for the process of experiencing something, but I cannot access it without interrogating it.) So, if you don’t want to have this thing spoiled for you, or don’t know how to behave when a person on the internet, that you don’t know, has opinions that don’t line up with yours, this review is not for you. It’s also not for the author/creator of the work. Please and thank you.
The description on the tin of this Netflix docu-series isn’t far off. It’s an intimate look at what music as an industry does to the fodder it runs on: people.
Because artists are fodder that get chewed up and spit out by the industry (as we’ve seen before, see Five Foot Two about Lady Gaga or Miss Americana about Taylor Swift, for other good documentaries on the same topic).
Usually, the more success they have, the harder they’re chewed up.
This was especially interesting for me because I was a huge Take That fan when I was in primary school (we had a Take That fan club that met in my friend’s mum’s linen closet, where we’d empty the shelves, crawl in to begin our meetings) and revisiting this history felt personal.
Through the years, I’ve followed Williams’ career as he went solo (I was one of the rare fans who wasn’t that upset that he left), without knowing any of the struggles he went through in his rise to stardom.
It never even occurred to me how young Williams really was, because to my tween-self, they all seemed a lot older.
And Williams’ struggles are extremely relatable. Being catapulted into fame at a young age would drive anyone mad!
Just as with Dave Grohl’s Storyteller, with this docu-series I found myself reflecting on my own history.
Because, being only a year away from becoming yet another patriarchal myth, I remember the events discussed, but from a very different point of view (obviously).
But as a young child, I obviously didn’t see or understand what went into creating these kinds of phenomenons. I was oblivious to the ruthless corporate machine behind the industry that drove forward with only one goal in mind: money.
Mental health and mental well-being wasn’t a concern on a corporate or an individual level. All that mattered was the product, the show must go on.
As Williams says himself in the series — as an older, wiser version of himself — mental health just wasn’t something that was discussed back in the 90s. Much the same point was made in the Beckham docu-series.
Both of these docu-series (and just about any other documentary about British celebrities) shows how brutal and exploitative the British tabloids are.
Williams openly speaks about how going back home to perform induced severe anxiety in him, largely due to the media and how they treated him both on and off the page.
He speaks about how he turned to substance abuse to cope in the absence of awareness and skills (and importance) about how to take care of your own mental health. (Which, in the case of becoming famous at a young age, you’d really benefit from having someone by your side to fight for you.)
I’m sure his story is a familiar one to many.
A cycle of trying to find your place in the world, of finding a sense of who you are and where you belong, and making many strange turns along the way that cost you a lot personally.
The documentary draws a clear line between Williams’ drive to be successful and his need for validation, but without exploring the root causes that led him to want to be in a boy band in the first place.
Granted, the documentary is based on Williams watching a lot of footage of his past self, a lot of which he has forgotten or never seen before, and retroactively telling us the story.
It’s not unlike when you find an old family album and your nan walks in as you flip through it, coming over to tell you about the context around the photos.
So, the scope is already limited to both the events and times in the footage as well as Williams’ reactions to it.
This I think is a good framework for a series exploring the size archive they do. It doesn’t let things get too far off track by keeping the story moving chronologically.
This isn’t a biography. Or, it kind of is, but a biography from the inside out, if you will.
It is an exploration of personal history, adding an internal layer of the story that doesn’t exist in the vast external documentation of the public persona.
After having been nearly constantly filmed and photographed since the age of 16, I absolutely understand the desire to retreat from the world. Indeed, Williams admits to spending a lot of time in bed and focusing more on family life.
Admittedly, retreating from the world is a lot easier when you’ve got an ostentatious private residence, where you can ghost through the long halls and large sitting rooms, and royalties to cover the bills.
Life isn’t so kind to all the regular folk who face similar struggles yet still have to get up for work in the morning for the rest of their lives.
While I think these conversations about fame and what it costs are incredibly important (especially, when kids these days aspire to be influencers) — and I think this series does add a valuable voice to the conversation — I can’t un-see the opulence surrounding the subject (I had the same issue with Beckham).
Williams sits alone in a sitting room with enough chairs to host a small conference and hugs his children goodbye on an arching staircase fit to be in a movie. Seeing all the empty space around furniture, I can’t help but think of other homes we see in the media, images of wealth that we’re constantly bombarded with and enticed to chase after.
As Kendra Gaylord said in either I watched 151 celebrity house tours and they’re full of lies or Celebrity homes are too big* (I watched them back to back and can’t be arsed to find out which one it was, I highly recommend both!) that when homes become entertainment, they lose the connection to their true purpose: being shelter.
But as I put that aside, I still find a personal story at the centre of it all that, as I said, feels important and worth telling. The interviews feel intimate because a lot of them happen in bed and with Williams in his underwear, or as he ghosts through his empty house.
It seems like revisiting the past and talking about it is cathartic to Williams himself, so I can only hope that it will be so for someone watching as well, who can relate to the struggles on his journey.
They are, after all, universal as we all can relate to feeling hopeless, alone and helpless.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Williams and his music and this documentary is really enjoyable, with a good narrative arc.
