Byrne’s band here is racially mixed, but he himself is very, very white no wonder he approached with caution.
And as a prelude to the show’s shiver-inducing version of “Hell You Talmbout,” he explains that he asked Monáe’s permission before venturing to cover the song. Between numbers Byrne addresses the audience directly, spinning amusing tales about where these songs came from (he wrote “I Zimbra,” with its lyrics by German Dada poet Hugo Ball, to respond to a challenge thrown down by his friend and collaborator Brian Eno), or urging us to fulfill our civic responsibilities (he uses a lighting trick to show how badly the citizenry is represented when only 20 percent of the population votes). This is a setting, a world, where certain essential problems have been worked out, creating the space and freedom to play.Īnd so even the songs every longtime Byrne or Talking Heads fan knows well-like “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody),” a moonlit cottage in ballad form, or the wriggly-waggly noodle dance “Slippery People”-take on new shapes and new life. The grand scheme is elegantly simple, yet never chilly. (The choreography is by dance veteran Annie-B Parson.) All the performers, including Byrne, wear identical lunar-gray suits, and all are barefoot the stage is bordered on three sides by a shimmery chain-link curtain.
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The musicians are also dancers and singers: their instruments are strapped to their bodies, untethered to any bulky sound equipment, which leaves them free to move and dance around the stage in a series of elegantly orchestrated numbers, with Byrne often at the center-though sometimes lurking at the edges, like living fringe-of the proceedings. But his desire to connect is robust, and it vitalizes everything that happens onstage during American Utopia. Even at age 68, he’s still like an alien learning the rules of the planet.
He’s friendly and familiar while jumping from Talking Heads landmarks to his more cerebral solo work, and submerges eagerly into the raucous, propulsive rhythm of his band.Byrne is an admittedly weird ambassador for the idea of connection: he isn’t what you’d call a naturally warm presence, at least not in Earth terms.
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I need to change.” As a seasoned musician and frontman, Byrne is attuned to his platform and knows how to use its every square foot. He describes ‘Hell You Talmbout’ as a protest song, but also a call for change, “not just in this imperfect world, but in myself. For the show’s penultimate number - a cover of Janelle Monáe’s ‘Hell You Talmbout’ - Lee cuts to a series of standalone shots that profile the song’s listed victims of police brutality, aligning himself with Byrne as a stalwart activist.īyrne - ceremonious with his muted silver suit and shock of white hair - bookends his songs with a blend of self-deprecating bons mots, anecdotes and ideas for a better future. Lee’s direction fluidly draws Byrne’s show into a new dimension, but is also heavily felt in the film’s most galvanising moments. Byrne channels a message of such disarming humility and faith that to walk away from this film unchanged is impossible.
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