#68 American Utopia

March 6, 2021
David Byrne’s American Utopia (2020) ****
HBO Max
Free
Movies from 2020

“Loved ones, loved ones visit the building,
Take the highway, park and come up and see me
I’ll be working, working but if you come visit
I’ll put down what I’m doing, my friends are important”

I had to get back to Movies from 2020 today, but I decided not to spin the wheel, but just to choose a movie that I knew I wanted to see, and that was David Byrne’s American Utopia.

This was the filmed (by Spike Lee) version of the show that Byrne had taken on tour and then to Broadway, and it makes an interesting contrast with Stop Making Sense, which I rewatched in January. This 35 year older David Byrne, without the rest of Talking Heads, but with a different group of musicians and dancers, in a highly choreographed show, seemed freer and more relaxed and natural than he was at 32 at the height of the band’s fame.

The group of performers, all wearing wireless mics and with their instruments strapped to them, are a tight and joyful ensemble, and David Byrne is a member of the group as well as the leader. Everyone wears grey suits and their feet are bare, which is somehow not as dismal as it sounds, but as bright and sunny as their faces are.

There were songs I knew and songs I didn’t remember (I had the My Life in the Bush of Ghosts album, but I didn’t listen to it all too much), but the absolute highlight of the film is the cover of Janelle Monáe’s “Hell You Talmbout,” which calls out the names and shows the pictures of black men and women who were unjustly murdered. I knew it was coming, I heard about it in detail in reviews back when the film was first released on HBO Max, but it was still incredibly moving, and brought me to tears.

This is an excellent show, not only in the fact that it’s a concert film with great music, but it’s a film about how we learn and grown and connect with our fellow humans. It’s a film about hope.