Monday, 25 February 2008
Even better and cheaper than the real thing. Bono said that he doesn’t like watching live footage of U2. He says it’s like pornography. And in one respect, with the staggeringly precise forensic detail of “U23D”, he’s probably right. But I’ve also learnt something else :
Bono’s a midget.
Seriously. Not only does he often look dwarfed by the huge staging of the Vertigo Tour, but also, “U23D” allows the careful viewer to notice that Bono wears shoes with big fat heels. It’s just one of the many things going through my mind whilst I spent 82 minutes with U2 on the biggest cinema screen in the country. That, and they really need to polish those scratchy mike stands and guitars.
Filmed over 5 shows (Buenos Aries, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Santiago, and Melbourne) at the tail end of the two year tour, U23D breaks new ground. It’s undoubtedly, 3D aside, one of the best (and most realistic) concert films of all time : it reflects exactly what it was like being there. Watching this brought back to me the exact same feelings and emotions and senses I had two summers ago when I spent four nights with the band in the United Kingdom. At the exact same points in the show there was the sense of wonder, of spectacle, of joy and healing of the shows themselves. Of not knowing where to look, of being carried away, transported to the other place that all great music achieves without even knowing how it does it.
The setlist reads like a best of U2. At 82 minutes, it’s missing almost half of the tours content : and is aimed squarely at a more casual fan of the band than you might expect. Almost every song here is one of U2’s many many Very Big Hits : and the set portrays - betrays - U2 as more of a old warhorse, of a cabaret act performing a global jukebox of old songs to massive stadiums which seriously undersells U2 ethos : unlike most of their contemporaries, U2 are never going to succumb to the comfort of nostalgia and pretending that it‘s 1987 again. But with the exception of “Love And Peace Or Else” and the closing “Yahweh”, every single song is a pack-em-in-the-aisles staple of U2’s set for decades now and decades to come.
It’s a far cry from “Rattle And Hum”. You can’t help but hold “U23D” up against the earlier work. The biggest contrast comes when the band perform the four songs also in that film ; “Pride”, “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “Where The Streets Have No Name” and “With or Without You”. In the 1988 film, these songs were new, fresh, hungry. Here, the songs are up to a quarter century old, and the young, idealistic men captured twenty years ago are now older, wiser men who’ve turned their idealism into a world-straddling, multi-million pound, t-shirt selling and ticket-shifting behemoth of a business. Bono’s voice isn’t quite as clear or as strong as it was then. But what it lacks in ability, it makes up for with character and age and personality.
U2 by now are a slick entertainment act, and Vertigo is perhaps the apex of emotional musical theatre. Here, the songs themselves cut to the raw emotions in fragments (the sweet lament of “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own”, the modern hymn that is “One”), and yet at the same time, are also a finely tuned pantomime of emotion. But distracted by those lights, those video screens, that presentation, it’s easy to not know quite where to look. Thanks to an efficient, but never flashy, editing style, “U23D” captures the bands spirit in an almost forensic detail : gone is the hyperactive Attention Deficit Disorder epilepsy of Hamish Hamilton’s tediously intense documents of the 2001 and 2005 tours. U23D luxuriates in the slow burn, the soft dissolve, the gentle pan. Precise, tasteful, and never merely flashy for the sake of it, it carefully deploys the tricks of the 3D trade with a brilliant understatement. Less is more. Images overlay and complement each other in a semi-impressionistic collage of visuals that create the equivalent of an ever-changing painting.
It also captures the perspective of a casual concert goer with no small accuracy. And the terror of fame. The occasional shot from behind the drum kit, with a stadium of 80,000 jumping Brazilians or Argentinians or Australians, shows just how intense a drug fame can be. The Edge cracks open the beginning chime of “Where The Streets Have No Name”, and in front of us, a sea of people undulate like a wave as far as the eye can see. It’s times like these - where the stadium is bathed in the light of mobile phones or rapt in cheers as Bono drops the name of Whatever City He’s In - that you can start to see, even for a second, what it must be like to be Hitler or Robbie Williams. This choreographed spectacle is Bono’s personal ‘Triumph of The Will’.
Thankfully, Bono’s been demugged of his usual rampant ego in this film : his often meandering speeches, his tedious political hectoring, his mugging to the camera with The Meaningful Glance, his trademarked “V” hand gesture and his all inclusive Hand Gestures are stripped to a bare minimum : they’re still there, but dramatically reduced in frequency. Basically, all the things about Bono that get on most peoples nerves have been eliminated from “U23D“. It’s easy to forget that, despite all other things, Bono is actually meant to be a Rock Star. What he does in “U23D” is his day job. It’s what he does. And he would be wise to stop Jetting Around The World Telling Clever People How To Think and get on with the business of being a singer. I don’t remember electing Bono to be my Minister of Conscience.
There are politics in “U23D” : U2 are a political band, but in this film, the politics are the barometer of morality, not about trade agreements on Naboo and blockades which are perfectly legal. His speech in “One” is sliced to around 20 seconds ( 10% of the usual length). The language of morality is presented through the careful use of imagery and suggestion instead of the more-typical evangelical preaching. The film never overplays it’s 3D nature, nor the typical “Jaws3D” trick of poking a fishing rod at the camera (apart from one bit where Bono points at the screen), instead using the efficient 3D technology to provide the spectacle. The audience sing with tears in their eyes to “One”, whilst a security guard stares impassively from behind his massive ear defenders. The crowd undulates like a tide. Everyone has their mobile phones and cameras out. In this modern age, everyone is filming reality instead of living it. In one shot during “Love And Peace Or Else”, a girl holds two mobile phones up to Bono, and watches him through the screen instead of the real live rock star feet from her.
“The lead singer, Bono, is screeching out what sounds like ‘Where The Beat Sounds The Same’.. he reaches out to us from the stage, his hand outstretched, and I wave him away” - Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho.
It’s a short, intense 82 minutes that captures precisely the exact experiences I had of seeing the same tour some months earlier. The emotional tone of the film rises and falls into a crescendo of feeling that recreates the U2 live experience in a way that has never happened before and probably won’t happen again. Freed of half a day at a cricket ground supping £5 paper cups of weak lager and paying £100 a ticket to see a distant speck jump up and down and being lectured about human rights, “U23D“ concentrates on the music and is best concert film I have ever seen. No other music film has ever brought me to tears or evoked such emotions. If you see this, you don’t need to see and experience a real live U2 concert. Because this is even better and cheaper than the real thing.
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