Stop Making Sense
A polite man is driven to murder. He becomes a prophet and screams manifestos on love, war, and the increasingly alarming impact of technology and progress. Driven to insanity by his own insights into the human condition, he travels to a river in an attempt to drown himself but instead is baptized and absolved of sin. He dies, crosseyed yet painless.
This is the definitive fairytale of my generation, and the moral is "watch out, you might get what you're after". Jesus lives, and he's wearing a giant suit.
A film that is so flatly and universally beloved by all who watch it, regardless of affiliation with the band itself. And truth be told, I don't really care much for the Talking Heads — not that I dislike them or their music, but to me they are one of many bands that I can recognize the artistic and aesthetic value in at an intellectual level more than a Dionysian level. (And I don't really prefer my listening to be pleasurable on the intellectual level.)
What did I think about while watching this excellent film, a master of its genre? I thought about the greatest concerts in my life: Lost in the Trees playing in the tea house in Charlottesville, an equal number of band members and audience members; Blind Pilot playing in the Crystal Ballroom, an entirely acoustic set and an audience willing enough to go along with it; CHVRCHES at the Paramount in Seattle, sweaty and glowlit. What Demme captures here is that same indelible feel of the best live music, where you feel in the same breath and beat both completely alone and completely surrounded by the only people who matter: building, building, higher, higher.
I have half-joked with friends over the past couple years that I'm done with concerts as a medium. The event no longer holds any sort of allure outside of special occasions (once-in-a-lifetimes, family). The highest praise I can give this film is that it made me reconsider that stance.