The most grievous moment of the film is when Wade describes the horror of a particular sex act forced on him: “To be graphic about it … a full, adult, grown-man-sized penis in my mouth … in a little 7-year-old’s mouth.” And the most heartbreaking moment takes place when James describes what it was like to meet the fate that all these children apparently met: being replaced by another boy and, his bond with his own family already broken, abandoned. One night, James went to spend the night at Jackson’s Century City apartment, but another little boy was also there. Jackson took that child to his bedroom and closed the door, leaving James to sleep alone on the couch. “I cried and cried,” he tells us of that long night, “and I cried out for my mom.”

There is one moment in the film in which it is possible to think that Jackson—otherwise portrayed as monstrous—might have had moments of self-awareness, even of guilt. Wade says he once woke up in the middle of the night to find him sitting in the corner of the bedroom, sobbing. Jackson told him that he was sad because the boy was scheduled to return to Australia the next day, but throughout Jackson’s long, public life were hints that on some level, he was grappling with the deep horrors that he was allegedly committing in private.

Jackson’s childhood was marked by terror of his father. He said that just catching sight of the man could make him vomit; that Joe Jackson beat his sons with razor strops and belts when they made slight mistakes rehearsing. Michael’s sister La Toya accused their father of sexually abusing her in her early adolescence, but the claim was roundly denied by members of the family, who also deny the sexual-abuse allegations made in the documentary. (Jackson’s estate is suing HBO for $100 million, for violating a nondisparagement agreement.)

One of Jackson’s most famous songs grapples with the notion of guilt—“I’m starting with the man in the mirror/I’m asking him to change his ways”—and the “Thriller” video is about a young man trying to convince people that he turns into a monster at night. Perhaps, as he began to develop his relationships with young boys, he was testing the public, waiting for a punishment that never came. His plastic surgery seemed to become an act of self-erasure. In the end, the only way he could conquer the night was to have a doctor come and put him under anesthesia.

And through this terrible man, this destroyer, poured a force that can only be truthfully described as art. Michael Jackson’s dancing is no mortal enterprise: James Brown’s shuffle, Fred Astaire’s precision, and some other element that exists so far beyond anything as simple as influence, or talent, that we can only say we know it when we see it. It’s not a gift; it’s the gift itself.

The ancient question: What moral stain awaits us if we cannot abandon the art of a monster? None.