"This Is it," Michael Jackson told his प्रशंसकों in London, announcing his forthcoming संगीत कार्यक्रम tour. "This is the final curtain call." The curtain fell sooner than expected. What is left is this extraordinary documentary, nothing at all like what I was expecting to see. Here is not a sick and drugged man forcing himself through grueling rehearsals, but a spirit embodied द्वारा music. Michael Jackson was something else.

The film has been assembled from rehearsals from April through June 2009 for a संगीत कार्यक्रम tour scheduled for this summer. The footage was "captured द्वारा a few cameras," an opening screen tells...