Spike Lee and David Byrne aren’t an obvious pairing. While the former’s oeuvre, for the most part, features unflinching stories about Black life in America, the latter became a hero to white college-educated teens everywhere. But on closer expectation, the two are more similar than different. Both are a product of New York’s 1980’s and share a mutual interest in African culture. With their album “Remain in Light,” in 1980, Byrne and the Talking Heads became some of the first white artists to use afrobeats heavily in their music. And the pair, individually, have always remained staunchly independent visionaries regardless of mainstream trends.
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In 2018, Byrne released his eighth studio album “American Utopia.” The record would spawn a tour and later, in 2019, a series of staged concerts on Broadway, which mixed tracks from the aforementioned record and Talking Heads classics. Lee — whose past live experiences include the rock-musical “Passing Strange” and the comedy concert “The Original Kings of Comedy” — filmed Byrne and his eclectic band’s boisterous performances during their latest concert run. Before heading to HBO, Lee’s film now premieres at The Toronto International Film Festival, and to say the film is timely underreports its timeless message: We must improve our acceptance of those who are culturally, racially, and religiously different than us.
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More than an assemblage of concert footage, filmed over multiple nights, Lee captures the brimming energy and hope within the show, and adds visual twists to translate the urgent political message which underpins its every note. Lee and Byrne’s “American Utopia” does more than merely speak to the moment, the show dances and sings with a weightless abandonment that leaps beyond the heaviness of the clime.
With no cables or amps, the stage for Byrne and co is sparse. The minimalist setting would scare most filmmakers into relying upon tawdry crowd shots to enliven the scenery, but Lee uses the environment to his advantage. His and cinematographer Ellen Kuras’ compositions elevate the already heightened tracks. For instance, for the opening performance of “Here,” Lee tracks Byrne’s and co from behind the chain-linked curtains that surround the stage. The shots signal how more than other concert films, which often feature cameras stationed a million miles away from the action for the same bland wide shots, Lee’s footage is fully immersive.
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In fact, during the concert’s first hour, Lee rarely strays away from the stage, except for balcony stationed wide-shots which barely show the apron’s silhouetted first row. During the performances, Adam Gough’s sharp editing lens oscillates between full shots, leaning into the stage’s vast negative space to capture every eclectic dancer in concert with one another; bird’s eye-views of the symmetrical and geometric ordering of the band, and low-angled shots positioned from upstage center.
Since the band and Byrne are moving around on their bare tooties, Lee also relies on closeups of feet that’d make Quentin Tarantino blush. And as the space fills with more and more band members — musicians spanning from countries as far as Brazil; France; and Colombia — Lee finds intriguing groupings to fashion his compositions. In essence, it’s not a “let’s ignore the drummer for the lead singer” situation. But the full range of the production, and the individuality of the players — even though they’re all dressed in grey suits — is on display, causing songs like “This Must Be The Place” and “Once In a Lifetime” to retain the scope of their energy.
During the show’s lulls, when Byrne addresses the audience, the themes of the concert, if they weren’t already apparent, are made clear. For instance, when Byrne explains how Dada artist Hugo Ball inspired Slippery People, he cites Kurt Schwitters’ strategy of making sense of his world — one wracked by an economic collapse and the rise of fascism in 1932 — through nonsensical poems. When speaking of “Everybody’s Coming to My House,” he references how a performance by the Detroit School of Arts changed his interpretation of the song from one about isolation to inclusion. He modulates these tracks into critiques of xenophobia and jingoism. And later he pleads for the audience to register to vote. Throughout, the singer’s dryly ironic sense of humor lightly establishes his urgent message.
The film’s most poignant sequence involves Byrne covering Janelle Monáe’s “Hell You Talmbout” — a song the singer-actress performed at 2017’s Women’s March. The track commemorates the Black men and women — Trayvon Martin, Emmett Till, Atatiana Jefferson, Sandra Bland, etc. — who lost their lives as a result of white racial violence. Its mantra, “say his/her name,” this summer in particular, has become a rallying cry for Black Lives Matter movement, too.
Considering Byrne’s background as an older white male, the cover could easily backfire. But Lee takes the song beyond the concert environment and intercuts the track’s performance with pictures of those slain. Without spoiling too much, the sequence touchingly bows to the visceral pain felt by Black mothers, in particular, for a gut wrenching expression of the song’s blistering spirit. It’s Lee picking the perfect moment to exert not only his directorial voice, but his perspective as a Black man.
For the show’s final songs, Lee injects exuberance back into the concert, and mixes in crowd shots. The joviality for a Broadway show without sets, and with monochromatically dressed players, expresses what makes this performance — even beyond the foot-moving songs — so special. The sparse space is liberating, as Byrne states, not just because the performers feel untethered, but so does the lead singer. Rather than dominating the stage amidst faceless extras or the passing guest star, Byrne shares the area with his fellow musicians. And after a euphoric playing of Road to Nowhere — when Byrne and co enter into the crowd and share the concert with their faithful listeners — the behind the stage footage — which sees these dancers leave the artifice of the stage and become themselves — leaves Byrne and us — giddy.
“American Utopia” is the rare concert film whose importance extends beyond the songs. Because Lee hasn’t just captured a few performances and stitched them together. By never shying away from the frank discussions the music engenders, he’s given us a little borough of hope amidst our ongoing struggles. And while many will call his film timely, in actuality oppression is unfortunately, always in season. “David Byrne’s American Utopia” is an ideal world; it’s exhilarating and joyful; and Byrne and Lee actually do make a perfect pair. [A]
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