Bono: Stories of Surrender
(USA/Italy/Ireland, 87min.)
Dir. Andrew Dominik
Programme: Special Screenings (World premiere)
In the spring of 2023, Paul David Hewson took the stage at New York’s famed Beacon Theatre. On a bare arena, with only a table and some chairs as dressing, he was illuminated by spotlights and some LED panels flashing geometric patterns. Joined by a trio of collaborators, who were sitting in the wings, the “short man with the loud voice” known to the world as Bono began to tell his story.
The first five minutes of Stories of Surrender, documenting the U2 frontman’s book tour/musical revue, is more than a bit bumpy. The opening monologue, full of fire and pretension, would do little to assuage people who find the man a bloody bore. Bono speaks of a burst valve in his heart, and the whole thing takes on existential levels of dramatic import right from the get. For some viewers, the iconic frontman is a legend and his platform shoes seem incapable of a misstep. For others, he is a cloying, overly-eager celebrity prone to flowery pronouncements that verge upon arrogance.
And yet they would be wrong to quickly dismiss this project, just as superfans would be blind to the initial misfire that simply takes as gospel everything emerging from the man’s mouth. When it settles down, when the stories become both more personal and more playfully self-deprecating, things truly begin to sing.
Andrew Dominik, the Australian director perhaps best celebrated for the elegiac western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, while derided in equal measure for his take on the legend of Marilyn Monroe in Blonde, skates with this film between the two poles of exquisite artistry and arch, pretentious silliness that defined those projects, respectively. Those poles help to calibrate a subject as cloying and charismatic as Bono–his earnestness is both his draw and his curse.
Shot in handsome black and white by Erik Messerschmidt (Mank, Ferrari), this desaturated aesthetic has long been used to capture some of U2’s most iconic moments, usually under the direction of their long-time collaborator Anton Corbijn. (Dominik, meanwhile, regularly works with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, including on the music docs This Much I Know to Be True and One More Time with Feeling.) The effort does fit with the expected look, but one can’t help but wonder whether the smallest amount of colour saturation would have made it feel a more intimate and less staid. This is, after all, meant to be a stripped down version of the man’s psyche and musical output, so there’s already a lot of minimisation at play. The choice seems akin to a hat placed atop another hat.
Still, the result is indeed handsome, and makes the craggy smile lines that ring the rounded glasses on Bono’s face feel weighty, grinning and cajoling the audience while he hams it up with prop pints of Guinness and teases the crowd about missed lighting cues. The storyline mostly focuses on his early years, the heady school days where, in the same week, he met his soon-to-be wife Alison (with whom he’s been married for a half century) and his future bandmates. The sounds of the Ramones blare from the speakers, evoking the musical rebellion that captured the young Dubliner’s heart, and expressed outwards the otherwise internal angst of a boy who lost his mom.
The relationship between the buried mother Iris and the band was made manifest as their rehearsal space located just outside the cemetery where she was laid to rest, making for a morbid coincidence only reflected upon these years later. The chats with his dad, pointed discussions over drinks at the local pub, provide further insight and moments of droll, acerbic Irish comedy. It’s a highly theatrical device, perfect for this kind of stage show, and it certainly humanizes the events in key ways.
Equally appreciated are the auxiliary elements that Dominik includes to break the illusion of immediacy and remind viewers that this is a carefully filmed and tweaked performance, just as so many live recordings have some “sweetening” applied to their commercial releases. In this case, the breaking of the fourth wall is a reminder that no matter how intimate and confessional, this is a story told by a professional storyteller, and one cannot truly remove the jester from the deck of cards.
Songs like “Vertigo,” “Pride (In the Name of Love),” and several from Joshua Tree make up the set list, with key tracks from Rattle and Hum (which itself got a concert doc in 1988) taking center stage. With Jacknife Lee on percussion and synths, Gemma Doherty on harp, and Kate Ellis on cello, with the latter two filling out the sound with keyboards and additional vocal parts, the arrangements are at times simplified and stripped down, and playfully polyrhythmic at others. They’re all considerably different from their originals, and for fans of the songs themselves, it’s a fine experience to hear them in this different context.
Stories of Surrender therefore succeeds by allowing Bono to truly be the focus of attention, for better and for worse. Such iconic leaders of bands often serve as the group’s spokesperson and centrepiece, erasing the way that the internal relationships between the musicians actually operate offstage. The vast majority of their songs are credited to all the members, and while the Larry Mullen stage experience won’t nearly have the same cachet, Bono does his best to constantly remind audiences that behind his success are three other individuals (and many more) who have contributed to this legacy.
Stories of Surrender feeds fans a unique look at the songs and the stories, while even the most jaded viewers may be impressed with the musicality and charisma captured on camera. Something as simple as a pitch-perfect impersonation of Pavarotti is a joy, regardless of one’s views of Bono or his output. From the highest of operatic highs, to the most sombre of reflections endemic to any good Irish yarn, this film is for any lover of a tune and a tale.
