The Moment

Charli XCX is one of the biggest pop stars the world has right now, due to her meteoric rise thanks to her album brat and brat summer, it placed her at the height of her career, and at this height has decided to do something so left field, she has made a mockumentary about the subsequent tour following her album release, a film which perhaps presented itself as a look behind the curtain, as a glimpse into what her life was like, and while it might be these things, it’s also doing something way more interesting.

The moment is less so concerned with the minutiae of brat but that whole ecosystem provides a great launching pad for what is, at its core, quite a fundamental struggle that artists go through.

In a world so integrated and enmeshed with capitalism, what is the role of an artist? And furthermore, is it even possible for an artist to exist, to truly be making art their own unfiltered way, when they are burdened by the shackles of capitalism? If you're successful, and profiting from your work, your art, is it truly yours anymore, or has it been altered and modified to capture a wide enough audience.

There's a quote in the movie, and a quote which Charli has said herself surrounding brat, that "the world finally caught up to her". She hadn't really changed her output as an artist, instead brat was a result of culture intersecting with her. It was just the right moment.

This is the film's starting place. The harsh first few minutes of Charli going wild, with the maximalist flashing lights, and the 365 remix (godly hearing this in a cinema) blasting, this encapsulated brat - as it was intended.

Immediately, this is followed up by Charli being asked to perform this number again, and thus starts this shedding of art into commerce. It immediately provokes this question of performativity, was any of what we just watched real, is that who Charli is, is it what she wants brat to be, how much of her artistry is now being controlled and diluted?

The rest of the entirety of the film centres around this idea of brat getting completely lost, malformed and evaporated into the most commercially viable outcome, art so warped it no longer represented what it was in the first place, which ironically is what made it connect with people. It was authentic which in itself was unique.

The reason I say the film used brat as a launchpad is that the rest of the film doesn't really concern itself with reality. I'm sure some of these experiences happened, in some shape or form, but instead the film seeks to rip the idea of brat to shreds in order to explore its themes.

Loss is happening on two scales in the film, loss of self and loss of art. They’re occurring concurrently but in different ways. The idea of brat, which was so singular in the film, birthed from a human, has now entered the world and is at the world's whims. The artistic intent of that piece of art is free to be interpreted and malformed as the world sees fit. This idea of wanting to prolong the cultural zeitgeist as much as possible is deeply inhuman and antithetical to the art which was made.

It's the distillation of art into a product, into a brand, an identity, a movement, something which is able to be packaged up and sold. The film features a brat card, which plays a large factor in the film, but when it comes down to it, what does that mean? What is a brat card? Is brat a font and a colour scheme, is art able to be reduced that easily?

In the film, it's described as a way to get the fictional bank Howard Stirling to access a new demographic, which in a hilarious scene Charli's manager basically just admits it's gay people. Suddenly art which connected with people on a meaningful level is being sold to them, their identity is being weaponised against them to further the capitalist agenda of a corporation. What's hilarious is in real life, this was a card you could also purchase, and it sold out. Which I think only speaks to this idea of monitizing art further, that people insist on being part of a moment, rather than caring for the art itself.

It's insane how far removed this is from the original piece of art, in these scenes as well you see just how unwieldy the whole situation is, Charli has no say in this partnership, she randomly signs contracts which she doesn't read; the intent of an artist dissipates and is replaced by a room of executives and business people.

This clearly takes a toll on the perception of self, and it's this internal struggle between wanting success and the art to reach people, but losing the art in the process of doing this, of being a shell of who you are. Weirdly, I initially viewed Charli in this as kind of the weakest part; she feels very hollow, more of a vessel for ideas than a realised human person, but I think that’s the point.

When we first meet her, it's in this period of pure euphoria, of letting go, of dancing, and we never really see her return to this. The film interestingly doesn't show her perform again until the very end, where she has become an almost caricature of herself. Throughout the film, she seems drained and pulled in different directions by all of the voices around her; there are no real moments of rest in the film. Despite there being clear instances of rest.

It's in these periods of time, though, that when she's able to ruminate, and it seems like she very much has a one-track mind for the entirety of the movie, and that is just how can she keep this moment alive? That's why in her periods of rest, she isn't fully relaxed because her mind is consciously aware of the fact that if she stops, will all of this success stop around her?

For that, I think the film is very interesting. It is a single idea that is planted in her mind at the very start of the film, and it is the only thing that is able to come through in the decisions that she makes. There are small glimmers of respite, specifically when she's talking to her creative director, where the artistry of brat and the identity of self seemed to resurface, but all of that is washed away by the idea and the pressure of maintaining success and keeping the cultural moment that she managed to hold.

The film plays on this idea of the intersection between art and success and it's a very interesting parallel to view the film in the context of what actually happened in real life. What happened in the film didn't happen; it is an alternative universe in which she gave in completely to this idea of success and fame and being palatable and reaching a bigger audience.

In reality, she didn't do that; she remained authentic and did things her own way, as far as we know, but it's interesting seeing that these pressures clearly manifested in her life enough to want to creatively tell this story. Initially, I deemed it a little bit of a criticism that this film doesn't ever really tackle what brat is, what it really meant to her, why she was desperate to capture and prolong the success that she had; I just don't think that's what the film is. The film is able to abstract the idea of brat and instead it just becomes more realistically about art and the compromises that come with wanting to retain success.

These compromises manifest themselves implicitly in the film. Sure you're able to feel the album becoming more sanitised and corporate in real time, and Charli loses herself, but every time we move to a new location, we would get these flashes on the screens of the different locations in different fonts and stuff, and as the movie goes on, that devolves, and brands and names start getting inter spliced in which further just perpetuates the idea, that in this version of the story, she has lost control of what her art, and it has instead become something to be sold to people.

It’s why the speech at the end felt a little out of place because most of the film isn't concerned with what made brat special and why it connected with people, so to get this monologue with Charli detailing what that piece of art personally meant to her felt a little jarring.

However, using brat as a concept, as a way to just talk about the pure state of art, the art before it was touched and mishandled, when it was just about the piece of art and nothing more, this scene really shines. It is an artist coming to terms with the fact that they have lost their identity, they've acknowledged it, and they are saddened by it, but it is the reality that they're having to deal with.

It's deeply sad, but it's the acknowledgement that her art no longer holds the same meaning as it used to; the ending of the movie, while hilarious is also profoundly upsetting. It is somebody who has lost control completely of what they made, of a piece of art that meant something to them and instead is this corporate product which has been engineered to appeal to the most people.

I honestly found this really fascinating. I have my reservations here and there about the film, but I think it is so commendable for someone of her status to make something this unapologetically them, to tackle feelings and situations and ideas that very few people will have experienced and yet are still able to relate to on some level.

We’re all being packaged and sold to people. People are selling things to us all of the time; it is hard to find authentic art that hasn't been burdened by capitalism in some way. To acknowledge that within a film, to show what that compromise and pressure results in, and then to compare that to the rollout we got... In an odd way the film then feels like an ode to creative liberties and trusting your vision, and for that I love it.