‘David Byrne’s American Utopia’ 4K UHD Blu-ray Review

“Thanks for coming. Thanks for leaving your properties,” David Byrne says when first addressing the viewers in Spike Lee’s filmed model of the musician’s world tour turned Broadway present American Utopia. An ironic assertion in 2019 was inadvertently solid in a radically completely different, altogether extra earnest mild a yr later. Byrne, after all, is the central determine in one of many biggest live performance movies of all time, Cease Making Sense, and one wonders if Lee felt any trepidation on the prospect of working within the lengthy shadow of Jonathan Demme. If he did, although, there’s no signal of it right here, because the filmmaker has crafted a live performance film practically the equal of the elephant within the room, one whose joyous celebration of its singular topic is among the many yr’s most invigorating works.

Lee’s dynamic visible sense initially takes a again seat to merely capturing the theatricality inherent to Byrne’s manufacturing. American Utopia opens with a hen’s-eye view of Byrne, a prop mind earlier than him on a desk. The digital camera then cuts to an eye-level view of the singer, and as he walks across the stage, scrutinizing the mind in his palms as he sings “Right here,” curtains of reflective beads rise from the ground, enclosing Byrne and his dancers on three sides. Not in contrast to Demme, Lee tends to keep away from viewers pictures in favor of isolating the paradoxically intricate minimalism of Byrne’s mildly surreal stage design and choreography.

At occasions, although, Lee flexes his visible rhetoric to focus on the intricacy of the present’s choreography, his digital camera suggesting a shifting fourth wall. “Everyone’s Coming to My Home” arrives at a momentary pause throughout which the troupe of dancers collapse right into a mass of our bodies, at which level the digital camera quickly pushes ahead into Byrne’s face (shades of John Wayne’s introduction in John Ford’s basic western Stagecoach). The tough, digital stomp of “I Dance Like This” conjures up Lee to imitate previous industrial music movies by using black and white, strobe results, and rapid-fire reducing. Most endearingly, “Burning Down the Home” seems to convey out the fan within the director, as some pictures are taken from the theater balcony, framed from the attitude of a giddy viewers member capturing the efficiency on their cellphone and unconcerned with getting the framing good.

Cease Making Sense famously narrativized the Speaking Heads story by beginning with Byrne humbly taking the stage alone and steadily being joined by increasingly more of his bandmates. This stage present performs on that concept by having the backup dancers and musicians continually seem and disappear round Byrne, circling him in ways in which, in basic Byrne style, make American Utopia as a lot a one-man present as an unlimited ensemble piece. There’s a sure irony to Byrne belatedly studying to be a extra beneficiant collaborator as a solo artist than he ever was as an equal in an ostensibly collaborative band. It’s apt, then, that Lee sees the present’s performers much less as a backdrop for a marquee star and extra as a collective. The topic of his digital camera’s focus tends to alter in relay style, shifting with one participant till getting sidetracked to observe another person as they dance previous. Pictures have a tendency to start or finish with Byrne because the dominant particular person within the body, however Lee performs up the dancers’ choreography in between.

Each Byrne’s choreography and Lee’s focus as a director not solely reckon with the legacy of Cease Making Sense, they discover methods to replace its wealthy undercurrents of social commentary. Byrne’s dance strikes in Demme’s live performance movie subtly integrated parodies of ’80s extra, from exercise-video-craze dances to the usage of a too-big go well with as a metaphor for the hole promise of Reaganomics. Right here, the robotic actions of Byrne and his performers, of their matching grey fits, grow to be a sort of interpretive dance about gentrification, homogenizing a world, various roster of performers for a present carried out on Broadway.

Regardless of this satirical undercurrent, American Utopia doesn’t wallow in cynicism, and the closing stretch breaks by way of the present’s many layers of postmodern impunity for a stirring plea for a greater world. Byrne covers Janelle Monáe’s “Hell You Talmbout,” an enraged lament for Black folks slain by cops and white supremacists that’s given added emotional influence by cutaways to blown-up images of the younger women and men named within the tune.

And in a testomony to this seemingly perpetual cycle of violence, and editor Adam Gough fills the house after the tune ends with images of others killed since this efficiency was filmed, together with Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, alongside a wall of textual content printing a full display screen of names that time to an pressing message on the backside of the body that screams “AND TOO MANY MORE.” The a cappella “One Positive Day” doubles down on the sensation of Byrne fading into his sizable solid, surrendering his ego to collaborators that he takes time to call and credit score for pulling off the present’s unorthodox staging.

Byrne’s openness climaxes within the encore, the Speaking Heads tune “Street to Nowhere,” throughout which he and the band go away the stage and wade all through the viewers. As they march by way of the aisles, the digital camera switches from skilled hi-def to consumer-grade, suggesting a fan of the present now marching with the band, resulting in a curtain drop during which each the musicians and viewers are left on the opposite aspect of the material, the traces between performer and viewers dissolved in a second of bliss. In a yr during which the coronavirus pandemic has devastated each the theatrical and live-music industries, American Utopia feels as very similar to a balm as it’s a surprisingly direct name to political motion and social betterment.

Picture/Sound

Criterion’s switch, from a brand new 4K digital grasp supervised by director of images Ellen Kuras, incorporates a sharp picture that actually highlights each exuberant motion and facial features within the movie. This isn’t precisely a colourful movie, however the pores and skin tones are naturalistic and there’s greater than sufficient selection within the colour shades to intensify the subtlety within the lighting all through. It’s the 5.1 encompass audio, although, that’s the true promoting level, capturing the ability and power of all of the reside devices with spectacular depth and resonance.

Extras

A brand new 55-minute documentary that includes Spike Lee, David Byrne, and quite a few collaborators delves into the assorted creative selections that helped convey American Utopia to life on the stage and on movie. Byrne elaborates on his course of and what he hoped to convey by way of this efficiency, and from the phrases of his collaborators, it’s clear that they shared his imaginative and prescient. We additionally get a 2020 dialog between Byrne and Lee the place they speak about how they met and their concepts about methods to make the stage present cinematic, in addition to share some amusing behind-the-scenes tales. Lastly, there’s a foldout booklet with an appreciation by critic Jia Tolentino and an essay by critic Okay. Austin Collins, who discusses Byrne and Lee’s expertise in reside performances and what made their pairing on this venture so excellent.

Total

If there’s a path towards an American utopia, it feels as very similar to a climb as we speak because it did again in 2020, however Criterion’s 4K launch of this ebullient and optimistic live performance movie serves as a potent reminder that regardless of the end result, all of us play an element in making it occur.