{"id":4794,"date":"2026-07-24T04:36:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T04:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=4794"},"modified":"2026-07-24T04:36:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T04:36:41","slug":"sia-nostalgic-for-the-present-review-a-concert-performance-film-from-2016-but-it-channels-sias-mystery-and-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=4794","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Sia: Nostalgic for the Present\u2019 Review: A Concert Performance Film from 2016, but It Channels Sia\u2019s Mystery and Power"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tWhen Lady Gaga first ascended to supernova celebrity, with the release of \u201cThe Fame\u201d in 2008, there was a time when she kept her face hidden \u2014 under the elaborate masks she wore in videos, and even in interviews, for which she would also show up masked. It was a highly elaborate act of camouflage, but the ruse worked. She was only 22, yet she created an aura of mystery around herself, conjuring \u201cLady Gaga\u201d as a larger-than-life character. (When you heard that she was really Stefani Germanotta from New York City, you would think: Really, who is that?)<\/p>\n

Read more Director Na Hong-Jin Makes Comic-Con Debut With Frightening New \u2018Hope\u2019 Footage, Says Casting Hoyeon Was His \u2018Best Decision\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

\nSia, born in Australia 10 years before Lady Gaga, had a career that predated hers as well. But by the time Sia hit her solo stride in the late 2000s, she didn\u2019t simply borrow from the Gaga mask playbook. She concealed her face to the point that the mystery became part of who she was. \u201cSia: Nostalgic for the Present,\u201d which opens tomorrow and is showing in select theaters for a limited run, is a performance film that was originally created for Sia\u2019s 2016 Nostalgic for the Present tour, and in the entire movie you never once see Sia\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe\u2019s right there in front of us, standing and singing on a platform at stage left, hidden under a half-blonde, half-black wig with bangs that hang down to her lips. There\u2019s an oversize white bow on top of the wig, and she wears a white dress that resembles a nurse\u2019s uniform from the early \u201960s. Sia\u2019s greatest songs, like \u201cUnstoppable\u201d and \u201cTitanium\u201d and \u201cThe Greatest,\u201d are anthems of strength, power, fortitude, invincibility, and watching the movie it\u2019s fascinating to behold how her facelessness feeds that quality. She\u2019s an abstract figure, a pair of lips singing, and this creates the sensation that the power she\u2019s singing about doesn\u2019t emanate from her. She\u2019s channeling a force larger than herself \u2014 the rising specter of feminine triumph. She\u2019s merely the vessel.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m not entirely sure what the two-tone wig means (the duality of woman?), but everyone in the movie wears a version of it: the dancers, the actors (Kristen Wiig, Paul Dano, Ben Mendelsohn, Gaby Hoffman) who each appear in one dance video, as well as the choreographer, costume designer, and offstage crew members. They\u2019re all wearing the wig, which looks like the fabled New York black-and-white cookie turned into a fashion emblem of talismanic power. \u201cSia: Nostalgic for the Present\u201d is basically a 75-minute-long series of dance videos that were designed to be projected onstage during the tour, with live performers mirroring the movements in the videos. The featured star is, of course, Maddie Ziegler, the whirling dervish of a child dancer who pranced and flung and gyrated her way through three celebrated Sia music videos; she was 14 when the Nostalgic for the Present tour unfolded.<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018Batman: Caped Crusader\u2019 Season 2 Reveals Joker Voice Actor: \u2018House of the Dragon\u2019 Star Matthew Needham<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tThis weekend, if you go to \u201cSia: Nostalgic for the Present,\u201d what you\u2019re seeing is a 10-year-old movie (and a promotional one at that), so it\u2019s severely lacking in the shock of the new. There\u2019s no getting around the fact that it\u2019s a greatest-hits compendium. But though Sia\u2019s last major hit was a decade ago, she had such an intuitive gift for crafting powerfully infectious pop songs that it\u2019s hard to understand why she hit a wall. I think it might have had something to do with the mask\/wig\/hiding thing. Pop stars, especially the ones who have extended careers, are people who have a primal desire to put themselves out there. Whereas Sia clearly had a primal ambivalence about that. She was a camera-shy exhibitionist.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn \u201cNostalgic for the Present,\u201d her voice is commanding, ringing out with those soul inflections that make her sound like Amy Winehouse if Winehouse were being produced by Giorgio Moroder. The dance performance that\u2019s at the heart of the film is the sort of thing that felt transgressive back then, but now it looks like something out of a 2010s nostalgia reel. Maddie Ziegler, who was born in Pittsburgh and got her start on \u201cDance Moms,\u201d flings her body around with a kind of airy gymnastic aggression, and she specializes in facial contortions meant to express the underlying ferocity of Sia\u2019s music (and are sometimes just there as psycho flourishes to mess with the audience). Ziegler is like a mime crossed with Daryl Hannah in \u201cBlade Runner,\u201d but there\u2019s also a touch of Sid Vicious to the way that she\u2019ll mug and curl her lips like a teenage brat who\u2019s gone off her meds.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe hits remain sublime. I retain a special adoration for \u201cChandelier,\u201d a song of hedonistic assertion and underlying ambivalence that, for me, is filtered through its brilliant use as the centerpiece of the Broadway version of \u201cMoulin Rouge!\u201d I\u2019m writing about Sia as if she had gone away, but as someone who loves her music, I see no reason on earth why she couldn\u2019t now enjoy a comeback as ferocious as the one that Gaga had with \u201cAbracadabra.\u201d She wouldn\u2019t even need to come out from behind the wig; that would play like gangbusters on the Grammys. But she\u2019d have to rouse herself to do what she used to do: create a dance hook as shiny and fierce and glorious as titanium.<\/p>\n

Read more Charli xcx Cranks Up the Guitars and Launches Her Post-\u2018Brat\u2019 Era With the Razor-Sharp \u2018Music, Fashion, Film\u2019: Album Review<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

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\t\t\u2018Sia: Nostalgic for the Present\u2019 Review: A Concert Performance Film from 2016, but It Channels Sia\u2019s Mystery and Power<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\t\tReviewed at Regal Union Square, New York, July 23, 2026. Running time: 75 MIN.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

    \n
  • \nProduction:<\/strong>
    \nA Trafalgar Releasing release of a Monkey Puzzle production, in association with Radical Media, Collider, and Serial Pictures. Producer: Jason Baum. Executive producers: Sia, Jonathan Daniel, David Russell, Jennifer Heath, Daniel Askill, Sara Greco.\t\t\t<\/li>\n
  • \nCrew:<\/strong>
    \nDirectors: Sia, Daniel Askill. Camera: Bobby Shore. Editor: Lorin Askill. Music: Sia.\t\t\t<\/li>\n
  • \nWith:<\/strong>
    \nSia, Maddie Ziegler, Nick Lanzisera, Stephanie Mincone, Wyatt Rocker, Paul Dano, Gaby Hoffman, Ben Mendelsohn, Tig Notaro, Kristen Wiig. \t\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Made for her tour from a decade ago, it’s a dance-video projection of Sia’s greatest hits. 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