Summary
Part Broadway performance, part concert but all David Byrne, all the time. A film that sparks joy and thought in equal measure – and that’s just the first five songs.
In 1984, David Byrne, Talking Heads and Jonathan Demme elevated the idea of the concert with with Stop Making Sense. With this hybrid film, he joins forces with Spike Lee to elevate both theatre performance and modern music performance.
At its most basic level, this is a recording of David Byrne’s Broadway show. It’s a performance that features the former Talking Heads frontman, 11 musicians and 21 career-spanning songs. That’s a perfectly serviceable account of what happens in the 105 minute runtime, but to leave it at that would be selling this show monumentally short.
On a simple blue stage, surrounded on three sides by dangling chain links, all of the performers use wireless equipment. This allows the performers freedom of movement across the stage, liberating the band from the fixed positions we’re used to seeing. Plus, by removing everything from stage except what “we care about,” Byrne and his amazing ensemble strip away the clutter and present new songs and old in completely original ways.
Byrne sets the scene with ‘Here’ – a newer song written for AMERICAN UTOPIA – and places us in “another dimension/like the clothes that you wear.” Yet Byrne immediately takes us on a journey through songs off Rei Momo (1989), Talking Heads: 77 (1977) and his 2002 collaboration with British House duo X-Press 2.
When ‘This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)’ drops a mere five songs in, and ‘Once In a Lifetime’ shortly after, you might wonder if he’s peaked too early. Yet that would be also be forgetting just how many influential tunes this man has been involved with over the years. That said, one of the most powerful moments is a cover of Janelle Monae’s ‘Hell You Talmbout,’ a group chant that names people like Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Sharonda Singleton and other black Americans killed by police.
The latter is the most direct link to Lee’s dramatic films, although it should be noted that he has been filming stage shows since at least since 1998’s Freak. (Indeed, Lee’s next project is said to be a musical about the invention of Viagra!) The steady hands of Lee and regular cinematographic collaborator Ellen Kuras guide us through this world. The camera is no more static than the performers, finding new angles throughout and all culminating in the band marching through the audience like a Dixieland troupe.
At the end of a very long year, one that has served up some of the biggest hardships we’ve had to face as a generation, it’s wonderful to see something that is just a joy to behold. At times freewheeling, and at others marching to the beat of an unencumbered drummer, but it’s always tightly controlled. This is Stop Making Sense on contemporary HBO money, and that’s better than a bag of chips.
2020 | US | DIRECTOR: Spike Lee | WRITER: David Byrne | CAST: David Byrne, Chris Giarmo, Tendayi Kuumba, Karl Mansfield, Angie Swan, Bobby Wooten III, Mauro Refosco | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures (AUS)| RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 26 November 2020 (AUS)
