David Byrne's American Utopia (Spike Lee)

[Stay Puft]

DAVID BYRNE'S AMERICAN UTOPIA
Dir. Spike Lee



IMDb page

[Stay Puft]

I'm a big fan of the music but having now seen this show (which I do think Lee captures skillfully, it's a good concert film), I'm not really all that enthused with the production Byrne has put on here? He recontextualizes some of the Talking Heads back catalogue, and then awkwardly hammers in a Janelle Monáe cover song, and I don't think the box he's putting all this stuff in actually does any real justice to his own music and legacy (nor Monáe's!). It's still a yay, it's definitely entertaining (I watched it on Christmas Eve and had a very pleasant evening), but I'm just not sure if this is something I'd ever want or need to revisit.

[Peng]

This can't help but stand next to Stop Making Sense, and it comes up a little short in that regard, with the unity that Byrne and Demme conceived together for both mediums now taking a backseat to the design of live performance first, with brief speech pauses in between. (I guess it's all there in both films' titles, in which one's vision of utopia needs a bit of explaining, rather than letting the audiovisual goes straight for the sense) Still, the appeal of watching Byrne perform remains unmatched decades later, and Lee heightens him and his crew with the director's own touches on the performers' gestures and expression, to help make this an often collectively euphoric experience. The two artists' sensibilities reach their peak of syncing in Byrne's "Hell You Talmbout" cover, in which Lee supplies cutaway and brief epilogue images that reach beyond the observational confine of concert hall bracingly. 8.5/10