Sometimes narratives about real-life figures seem unremarkable and underwhelming in their representation of the subject, then there is Piece by Piece, one of the most bizarre and perhaps misguided attempts at trying to be overly creative. It is a biopic meets documentary of Pharrell Williams. But, what is unique about the film is that it is shot using Lego, which Pharrell Williams states is the true way to express his personality, with his voice featuring predominantly in voice-over, acting as the narrator as the film cascades through his life.
The film is much more a documentary than the biopic that it is marketed at, but it is crossing these blurred lines. Opening with Williams in his house, as he welcomes in the camera crew, he breaks the fourth wall before heading into a separate room to conduct his interview where he informs the director, that he wants this to all be in Lego, and so it is. The reasoning for this is a little convoluted, but it is basically a way for Williams to most easily access his expressive sensibilities. But Williams’s Lego figure informing the crew of his intentions shows that he has creative control over this project which takes the audience through his life without much in the way of throughline, showing us how he thinks as he grows his career, brick by brick, piece by piece.
From a Lego perspective, this is very different to the other four Lego movies that have hit the big screen in the last decade or so. The first film in particular aimed to show through the medium, the power of Lego as a way of creating worlds and encouraging dream-like expression – both a way of encouraging the demographic to buy Lego as a cool way of showing off imagination and as an important tool of individuality. However, Piece by Piece is inherently founded in the real world, but nevertheless, a dialect is still there in Lego, showing scenes transforming through Pharrell Williams’s imagination. Yet, I struggle to see the audience this will bring – on the one hand, it looks like something for children due to its Lego animation style that comes with a set of expectations built up over four films, whilst the meandering subject matter may intrigue adults, the bizarre choice of medium feels jarring that its audiences may be unaware what the film is about immediately from a poster.
Piece By Piece takes no time in involving the audience in the action, beginning with his memories in a journey that will bring the audience to the present day in just 93 minutes. In one of his opening remarks, Pharrell states his love of water, saying his obsession triggered some kind of abilities as Neptune’s trident anoints the head of a baby Pharrell Williams Lego figure, however, it never engages or delves deeper into this fascination, as you quickly realise is a meandering piece without much in the way of creative pushback.
The choice to shoot this as a Lego movie is obviously the most jarring aspect but it is still an interesting choice, using the iconography of Lego to explore creativity. As Williams informs us early on “I knew I was different” and this stylistic choice certainly informs the audience of that. Early on there are some interesting uses of imagery, as he describes visualising music as “beautiful hues of light cascading”, the format allows for a visualisation of the stories told in interviews. However, as someone who knows little about Pharrell Williams’s journey, this did little to spark my curiosity.
The issues continue tonally, as you kind of forget that the film is about Pharrell Williams as it is shot in Lego. It feels like it could be about anyone. Perhaps being intercut with normal interview footage would have been a happy medium. However, as Williams goes on to tell the audience, that he didn’t fit in as a kid, having a dreamy personality, the Lego visuals add to his struggles. There is a need for escape which the film provides. However, beyond this analysis, the merger between Lego and Pharrell Williams feels a little shallow.
Conducted mostly in interviews with a linear storyline, director Morgan Neville shows Williams's rise to fame, showing different segments of his life. However, this becomes bland and stale, in repetitive iterations of the same style. It shows him having a problem in his life and how music resolved this issue and propelled him upwards. These obstacles are little and easy to overcome, there is no question of him as a person and little in how he changed as a person. Rather, he is a shining light in everyone’s lives, just waiting to be seen. These segments are without cohesion or structure creating a one-note arc that feels flat.
Only towards the end of the narrative does the film grapple with the troubles of his psyche. As he rises to fame, he turns to commercialisation shown with a group of men in suits all showing him the path to fortune. Williams concedes that he lost his voice trying to create an album with something for everyone rather than creating the music that excited him. This is the more nuanced and reflective side of him, it sharpens him into a more human figure that lights up the vibrancy and colour of his music.
Whilst this is definitely worlds apart from the other Lego films, there is definitely something here to tie in with the medium, a need for spark and creativity which is sometimes quite sincere. A journey about the impact of music as Williams states at one point, he is taking his life out brick by brick and then putting it back together to make sense of it. If only the structure lent itself to this remoulding nature, which would lend itself to a more creative style of filmmaking rather than just shooting the film in Lego.
On the whole, Piece by Piece is a bizarre way of shooting a documentary. Whilst I mildly respect the bold swings it takes the film feels shallower for it. It is hard to follow the moving pieces and it struggles to connect with the medium of Lego. Whilst this is something worth checking out if you’re a fan of Pharrell Williams, even then you may be crying out for a more conventional biopic/documentary that is less distracting. If anything, it is that other than the Lego aesthetic the film feels underwhelmingly unremarkable. If only they were able to reconstruct the several Lego bricks in the editing process to turn a sometimes sincere story into something greater than the sum of its plastic blocks.
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