The HBO concert film David Byrne: American Utopia (2020) will appeal to audiences to the extent that viewers can tolerate David Byrne's man-child simpleton schtick. Byrne, who seems to have not aged at all, was appealing thirty years ago in True Stories and Jonathon Demme's acclaimed Stop Making Sense, an earlier and much more feral concert film. But the man now must be pushing seventy and so it's a little disconcerting to see him still playing the wide-eyed and guileless naif -- particularly in light of recent revelations by former Talking Heads band member Chris Frantz (in his book Remain in Love) as to Byrne's hard-nosed and, even, predatory business practices. Byrne's stage persona depicts a gormless fellow who has accidentally wandered on stage and seems bemused at all the noise around him. A little of this act goes a long way. That said, Byrne and The Talking Heads have a deep catalog of interesting music, much of it familiar to me now for forty years, and his Broadway show is nicely choreographed and musically accomplished. (Needless to say the other members of The Talking Heads don't make an appearance -- the band collapsed under mutual accusations of greed and self-aggrandizing many years ago: there will be no reunion tour.)
American Utopia is a gussied-up concert film, about ninety minutes long featuring Byrne's compositions with a few tunes that date back to the Talking Heads period. The show has a sort of plot, although one that is extremely abstract and attenuated. We begin with Byrne wearing a loose-fitting flannel suit (a bit like an acolyte of Joseph Beuys) contemplating a human brain. (It's obviously a plastic model.) Byrne acts a little like a mad scientist. He asserts that when children are born, the brain contains many millions of neuro-connections that don't get completed and that ultimately wither away. Byrne asks what all this potential brain storage and brain power is for -- the theme is a little like Wordsworth's "Intimations Ode", asserting that the child's doors of perception are wide open and infants have more capacity for wonder and sympathy than adults -- this faculty for wonder is, as it were, atrophied by our growth into adulthood. (This theory, I think, accounts in large part for Byrne's simpleton, "child is father to the man" act.) At first, Byrne is alone on a stage bounded on three sides with great cascades of some kind of translucent metallic stuff -- sometimes you can see through this material; other times, depending upon the lighting, it is opaque. Two dancers join Byrne, a majestic-looking and rather robust Black lady and a very pale man with flaming red hair, black eye-shadow and lipstick -- this androgynous figure looks like a camp version of a young John Lithgow. The dancers perform, choreography that seems mostly derived from Pina Bausch -- it's a combination of ordinary gestures made larger and more theatrical and a sort of strutting back and forth. Everyone wears uni-sex flannel grey suits, identical with Byrne's garb, and the performers are all barefoot. Gradually, more and more musicians join Byrne on-stage: there are six percussionists carrying drums and marimbas slung about their waists, two guitars, and a man playing a keyboard instrument also mounted on his hips. All of these performers must not only sing, but also execute dance steps, mostly rudimentary, but sometimes quite complex. Spike Lee who has filmed the concert uses one camera mounted over the stage and aimed directly down on the performers. We can see from this vantage that the musicians often execute geometric figures, prancing about in circles or spirals or marching like the rotating spokes of a wheel -- this is clear from the vertically aimed camera, less apparent from a perspective in the audience. (The show is filmed before a large live audience in a narrow old theater somewhere on Broadway. The production is pre-Covid and the unmasked tightly packed audience is visible in many shots, particularly in the end when Byrne leads his corps through the house itself, promenading up and down the aisles in the theater.) The show ends with the assertion that, perhaps, the incomplete synapses in our brains can be completed by communion with other people, an idea materialized in Byrne's march through the cheering audience. It's a cheerful show, entirely devoid of any Sturm und Drang, and Byrne's band has a strangely robotic, toy-like aspect -- there's something curiouisly miniature about the proceedings. Byrne is careful to avoid overly hierarchical staging and, in the last third of the show, the star vanishes into his crowd of musicians. All politically correct boxes are duly checked. Pro-immigration, Byrne proclaims that he is a "naturalized citizen" -- he came to the country from Scotland as a little boy. He notes that his band members, whom he introduces in the middle of the program, are all from various countries and seem, also, to have a variety of sexual orientations -- at least, to the extent that this can be perceived in the very chaste and, almost, prudish production. There is an extended sequence about police brutality in which a number of pre-George Floyd victims are identified and their names called out (Monae's 2015 protest song, "Hell you Talmbout")-- this list extends back to poor Emmett Till. (Lee intercuts the militant proceedings on stage with huge frontal shots of mourners holding pictures of their brutalized loved ones -- he has done this in other films, including Da Five Bloods, and, frankly, the device, although well-meaning, is wearing a little thin by this time.) There are nods to global climate change and Byrne admonishes his New York audience to vote, noting that only 55% of the electorate voted in the 2016 election and that, on a local level, most elections garner only 20% participation of those eligible to vote. Before playing Janelle Monae's "Hell you Talmbout," the sole song not written by Byrne, the bandleader notes that he asked permission "as an old White man" to use the melody in his show. This is distressing -- would we expect African musicians to ask permission from modern-day Germans to perform the music of Beethoven or Schubert? But the whole thing is intended to be inspirational and, fundamentally, optimistic and it's certainly inoffensive -- David Byrne's pose of child-like bemusement takes the edge off any political statement that the show might be making and neutralizes everything into a mildly pleasing musical entertainment. There are some themes: Byrne notes that his song about immigration is edgy and suggests that "Everybody's coming to my house" is troubled by the notion that those who come may never leave. And he notes that a choir in Detroit that performed this song, no doubt a group of African-American singers, had a much more welcoming tone in their rendition. (We get to hear this piece over the closing credits in which Byrne's band members, careful to show their ecological responsibility, ride home through Manhattan traffic on their bicycles.) "Humans," Byrne asserts, "like most to look at other humans."
There are many lovely things in this concert and Byrne even permits himself a few moments of wry humor. The show is shockingly chaste -- normally, there is some admixture of the erotic in dancing. Here, Byrne shows lots of dance, but 'nary a sexual move -- no one flings a hip at anyone else and there's nothing so vulgar as a shimmy or twerk anywhere to be found. This is extremely peculiar since dance and rock 'n roll have always been sexually motivated pursuits. Byrne simply leaches all of the lust and desire from his company -- the lecherous master of ceremonies with the red hair and the lipstick is neutered. He looks bizarre primarily because everyone around him is so spectacularly repressed. There's something a little hollow about Byrne begging for the use of Lisa Monel's militant tune -- the last half of Byrne's career has been largely characterized by his appropriation of Afro-Latin rhythms and melodies from Brazil and the rest of South America. But in my estimation, there's nothing wrong with this -- music belongs to everyone. In the end, the gauzy metal lace curtains are drawn and the whole band appears on the naked stage. After a beautiful a cappella rendering of the Utopian "One Fine Day", Byrne leads his band on a trek through the audience, a climax that is similar to the great ending of True Stories, complete with wild "Yee-Haws!"and trail drive shouts of "Move 'em on out!" The best shot is backstage: we see the oddly automaton-like Byrne congratulating his performers; he even, rather reluctantly hugs, the guy with the flaming red hair and white skin and lipstick. The camera is handheld and we can see that sweat has soaked through the dancers felt suit -- that image somehow humanizes the whole proceedings; the show is so perfect and bloodless that there's no trace of sweat visible on stage. If you like Byrne's music, there is nothing to complain about in this film and much of it is even slightly inspiring. But there's nothing profound here.
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