December 30, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Henrik S. Burman
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Avicii — I’m Tim” features a predominantly white group of people (with a few African Americans and Asian people) who are friends, colleagues or family members talking about life and career of Avicii, the Swedish electronic dance music (EDM) artist whose real name was Tim Bergling, died by suicide (cutting himself with glass) in 2018, at the age of 28.
Culture Clash: Avicii was one of the top EDM artists in the world, but he struggled in with mental health and addiction issues at the height of his fame.
Culture Audience: “Avicii — I’m Tim” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Avicii and 2010s EDM/pop music.
“Avicii — I’m Tim” is a bittersweet documentary about this talented artist but it omits a lot of details about his life, even with rare archival interviews. It’s ultimately a cautionary tale about how fame and fortune cannot erase mental health struggles. Through archival recordings, Avicii (whose real name was Tim Bergling) is the narrator of the documentary, which gives the movie a haunting quality but serves as a vital voice for an overall conventionally made but effective biography film.
Directed by Henrik S. Burman, “Avicii — I’m Tim” had its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Festival. Netflix is releasing the documentary on the same day (December 31, 2024) as the Avicii concert film “Avicii — My Last Show,” which was filmed in 2018 at Ibiza’s Ushuaïa. “Avicii — I’m Tim” is told in chronological order and has the expected mix of archival footage mixed with interviews that were done exclusively for the movie.
Avicii (pronounced ah-vee-chee)/Tim Bergling was born on September 8, 1989, in Stockholm, Sweden. As he says in previous interviews, he had a very sheltered childhood, which was centered on just a five-block radius in his Stockholm neighborhood. He was the son of Klas Bergling (a manager of an office supply business) and actress Anki Lidén. Avicii’s mother and father provide some of the commentary in the documentary. Avicii’s three siblings—David Bergling, Linda Sterner and Anton Körberg—are not interviewed in the movie. In 2019, Avicii’s family established the Tim Bergling Foundation, to help with suicide prevention and people struggling with mental health issues.
“Avicii — I’m Tim” begins with a montage of Avicii’s career highlights. He can be heard saying in a voiceover: “I’ve always wanted to make timeless music. I feel like I’m filled with music. It’s my life’s biggest passion.” As a child, he says he was a class clown to avoid getting bullied. He also says he became nicer to people after a teacher told him that he had a reputation for being a snitch.
Tim began making music by remixing songs when he was 8 years old. He had diverse tastes in music, but eventually was most attracted to electronic dance music (EDM) because the technology gave him more freedom to experiment on his own. However, even before he became famous, Tim/Avicii knew he needed to find collaborators because he had no aspirations to be a singer.
In his teenage years, one of his earliest music collaborators was his best friend at the time: Flip “Philgood” Akeson, one of the people interviewed in the documentary. Akeson says that teenage Tim was “shy” and “very anxious. We were polar opposites.” Akeson adds, “He was a geek, to be honest.” Bergling chose the stage name Avicii (respelling of Avīci), which means “the lowest level of Buddhist hell.” Akeson says that he and Avicii drifted apart as Akeson went into a self-described “downward spiral” of drug addiction.
It was during these formative years that Tim developed his “night owl” lifestyle because less people bothered him at night. Tim soon caught the attention of Arash “Ash” Pournouri, who became Tim’s manager and is one of the people interviewed in the documentary. By all accounts, Pournouri becoming Tim’s manager was the turning point for Tim, who was too introverted to be a self-promoter. Pournouri’s unshakeable ambition and confidence to make Avicii a rich and famous artist, combined with Avicii’s prodigious talent, proved to be an unbeatable combination.
The rest of “Avicii — I’m Tim” chronicles Avicii’s rapid rise from EDM star to mainstream celebrity who could sell out arenas and festivals as a headliner DJ/artist. (His best-known hits are 2011’s “Levels” and 2013’s “Wake Me Up.”) He also became an in-demand producer and remixer with a reputation of not being afraid to experiment musically. But with success came enormous pressure to work as much as possible and continue making several hits.
Akeson says that when he knew Avicii, Avicii was very much against drugs, even marijuana. Toward the end of his life, Avicii had gone public about being in rehab for alcohol addiction and pills. Avicii’s anxiety also got worse in dealing with the demands of fame. As he says in an archival interview: “I was a lot happier before I was famous than after I was famous.” On April 20, 2018, Avicii committed suicide (cutting himself with glass) in Muscat, Oman, while he was on vacation.
Although “Avicii — I’m Tim” has a lot of talk about Avicii’s personal struggles and his career achievements, there’s not enough information in the documentary about what was really done behind the scenes to get him the help that he needed. Pournouri (who parted ways with Avicii in 2016) makes vague comments about people trying to do the best they can to help Avicii. Jesse Waits (a Las Vegas nightclub entrepreneur) says of Avicii: “He was very fragile and insecure. He was like a little brother to me.”
The movie, without explanation, also never talks about Avicii’s love life or how he dealt with fans/hangers-on who wanted to date him. Someone in Acivii’s position obviously gets this type of attention. (Waits tells a brief story of how he met Avicii when Avicii and two women used Waits’ home as an overnight crash pad.) But the documentary refuses to even mention any former lovers he had who might have known about his personal challenges and who possibly tried to help him. Did Avicii ever fall in love? That’s a question the documentary won’t answer.
Most of the people interviewed in “Avicii — I’m Tim” are people who knew Avicii because they had a business relationship with him. They include Per Sundin, CEO of Universal Music Nordic Region; singer Aloe Blacc; DJ/artist David Guetta; Neil Jacobson, A&R executive at Interscope Records; Chris Martin, lead singer of Coldplay; country singer Dan Tyminski; music producer songwriter Nile Rodgers; Sony Music Publishing executive Johnny Tennander; songwriter/producer Carl Falk; musician/songwriter Mike Eizinger; music journalist Katie Bain; musician Salem Al Fakir; and singer/songwriter Joe Janiak.
In 2016, Avicii announced that he was taking a hiatus from touring because he was exhausted and wanted to work on his mental health. When people experience this type of burnout, they often feel like they are being treated like workhorse robots in their life. By refusing to show a full picture of who was in Avicii’s support system at the lowest points in his life, “Avicii — I’m Tim” sidelines some of his humanity. But with his voice as the narration, some of that humanity is retained instead of being drowned out by the documentary’s talking heads who profited from knowing Avicii in some way.
Netflix will premiere “Avicii — I’m Tim” on December 31, 2024.
