'Billy Joel: And So It Goes' Review

Susan Lacy chronicles the life of the iconic "Piano Man" in a two-part documentary.

When critics complain about celebrity-focused documentaries, they should acknowledge that we have two great filmmakers to thank for two types of well-produced celebrity docs with integrity. You’ve got the verité profiles of famous people, especially actors and musicians, that follow D.A. Pennebaker’s intimate style. Then there’s the biographical type perfected by Susan Lacy, creator of the PBS series American Masters. She later jumped to HBO to make features chronicling the lives of such icons as Steven Spielberg, Jane Fonda, Ralph Lauren, and now Billy Joel. Her new documentary, a two-parter titled Billy Joel: And So It Goes, is also her best yet.

As with most two-part biographical documentaries, though, the first half of And So It Goes is much better than the second half. Chalk it up to artists’ formative childhoods, early struggles, early successes, rise, and peak being much more interesting than their later and current years of wealth, fame, and, given what’s happening in this moment of them being filmed, reflection. Through the first part and some of the second part, Joel’s story seems easy to tell. His songs are so heavily inspired by and connected to chapters in his life that they guide the narrative like a jukebox musical (not to be confused with the actual Billy Joel jukebox musical, Movin’ Out). Here’s when and why he was a “Piano Man.” Here’s his bad experience with the music business that informed “The Entertainer.” Here’s when he fell in love with an “Uptown Girl.”

But the documentary does more than just connect the dots and fill in the spaces with context. The first part covers his first marriage to his initial muse and professional partner, Elizabeth Weber, who deserves credit for almost being a co-protagonist in those early years of the biographical plot. There are plenty of great sections in the hodgepodge second part, including the story of how his father and paternal grandparents escaped Nazi Germany, more about his connection with classical music, and his eventually strained relationship with longtime friend and drummer Liberty DeVitto. Unfortunately, I also associate the second half too much with the segments on his marriages to his much younger third and fourth wives, which, regardless of their importance to Joel, are at odds in a narrative sense with the Elizabeth years.

Also, could Lacy not even slip in at least a mention of Joel’s voice-acting role in Disney’s oft-forgotten animated film Oliver & Company? Still, when And So It Goes is good, it’s very good, especially as a music documentary. More than being used for biographical bullet points, many of Joel’s most notable songs and albums are given thorough examination, from their origins and their production to their legacies. And looking back now, particularly after such examination here, it’s crazy how many of them were dismissed by music critics upon release. As a real-life human being or film character, which he gets to be in scenes where he’s telling his story or being followed in the present, Joel’s personality and likability remain at an arm's (or piano’s) reach. In the end, I don’t feel I know who he is, just what he was and did. But that’s why this works as a biographical documentary, not the profiling type Pennebaker mastered.