U2 3D
Directed by Catherine Owen & Mark Pellington
Technology, like sex, is what sells at movie theaters today. From The Lord of the Rings trilogy to Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf, technology itself becomes the content when filmmakers abandon interest in human nature. This is less offensive in the new concert movie U2 3D where state-of-the-art transcription of a 2007 rock concert in Buenos Aires distracts from the banality of U2’s music.
I looked forward to this film primarily because of U2’s concert technology at the 2002 Super Bowl when the group used laser projection to convey its tribute to the victims of 9/11. During “Where the Streets Have No Name,” the names of the more than 3,000 sacrificed people rose from the stage, launched into the night sky—a perpendicular roll call reconstituting the now-vanished WTC towers. This vision also provided those names a literal ascension into the heavens, an artful demonstration of mortal transition.
Nothing that profound or stirring occurs in U2 3D. Instead, the you-are-there excitement of sensing Bono’s body weight in the vast space of an arena stage, or watching The Edge’s guitar and Adam Clayton’s bass carve the air, or Larry Mullen’s drumsticks bouncing through laser lights, makes the show tactile. This gives the no-longer-working-class boys from Ireland a pretend purpose of demonstrating art as work—the work of communication. Stage technology, plus three-dimensional photography and post-production, helps decorate the songs: During “Pride (In the Name of Love)” a Martin Luther King Jr. portrait becomes the backdrop.
Directors Catherine Owen and music-video veteran Mark Pellington manipulate 3-D to help moviegoers share the concert experience. Laser confetti showers upon you in your geek-tastic 3-D glasses, huddled in the crowd of Argentinian fans’ waving arms and thrusting hands. As with Disney’s Chicken Little, 3-D effects have never before been such effective fun. Owen and Pellington create live-motion collages, emphasizing constant, overlapping, evanescent dissolves. Space becomes a character as much as that bellowing bantam humanitarian.
Bono’s global diplomacy gets self-righteous when he changes “Where the Streets Have No Name” from a celestial metaphor into a lesser political one. Rousing the audience with the mention of “Latin America,” is not simply road-tour name-checking; the accompanying digital display of various South American flags turns the assembled throng into a nationalist rally. This response sours Brian Eno’s thrilling intro, just as a later series of word graphics played in random/ironic combinations diminishes the linguistic delight—such as Laurie Anderson originated in her 1987 concert film Home of the Brave, a still-entertaining record of performance art at its most clever and benevolent.
Eventually, U2 3D lacks the techno apotheosis you can imagine—the kind that might come from seeing a greater band in concert, as when dance-club imagery climaxes New Order’s True Faith music video. That wasn’t digital 3-D but ecstasy in analog.
Directed by Catherine Owen & Mark Pellington
Technology, like sex, is what sells at movie theaters today. From The Lord of the Rings trilogy to Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf, technology itself becomes the content when filmmakers abandon interest in human nature. This is less offensive in the new concert movie U2 3D where state-of-the-art transcription of a 2007 rock concert in Buenos Aires distracts from the banality of U2’s music.
I looked forward to this film primarily because of U2’s concert technology at the 2002 Super Bowl when the group used laser projection to convey its tribute to the victims of 9/11. During “Where the Streets Have No Name,” the names of the more than 3,000 sacrificed people rose from the stage, launched into the night sky—a perpendicular roll call reconstituting the now-vanished WTC towers. This vision also provided those names a literal ascension into the heavens, an artful demonstration of mortal transition.
Nothing that profound or stirring occurs in U2 3D. Instead, the you-are-there excitement of sensing Bono’s body weight in the vast space of an arena stage, or watching The Edge’s guitar and Adam Clayton’s bass carve the air, or Larry Mullen’s drumsticks bouncing through laser lights, makes the show tactile. This gives the no-longer-working-class boys from Ireland a pretend purpose of demonstrating art as work—the work of communication. Stage technology, plus three-dimensional photography and post-production, helps decorate the songs: During “Pride (In the Name of Love)” a Martin Luther King Jr. portrait becomes the backdrop.
Directors Catherine Owen and music-video veteran Mark Pellington manipulate 3-D to help moviegoers share the concert experience. Laser confetti showers upon you in your geek-tastic 3-D glasses, huddled in the crowd of Argentinian fans’ waving arms and thrusting hands. As with Disney’s Chicken Little, 3-D effects have never before been such effective fun. Owen and Pellington create live-motion collages, emphasizing constant, overlapping, evanescent dissolves. Space becomes a character as much as that bellowing bantam humanitarian.
Bono’s global diplomacy gets self-righteous when he changes “Where the Streets Have No Name” from a celestial metaphor into a lesser political one. Rousing the audience with the mention of “Latin America,” is not simply road-tour name-checking; the accompanying digital display of various South American flags turns the assembled throng into a nationalist rally. This response sours Brian Eno’s thrilling intro, just as a later series of word graphics played in random/ironic combinations diminishes the linguistic delight—such as Laurie Anderson originated in her 1987 concert film Home of the Brave, a still-entertaining record of performance art at its most clever and benevolent.
Eventually, U2 3D lacks the techno apotheosis you can imagine—the kind that might come from seeing a greater band in concert, as when dance-club imagery climaxes New Order’s True Faith music video. That wasn’t digital 3-D but ecstasy in analog.
