There’s a thank-you to Jonathan Demme in Spike Lee’s filmed version of David Byrne’s Broadway show, American Utopia. How could there not be? In 1984, Demme collaborated with Byrne to make Stop Making Sense, a movie that nine out of 10 reasonable people would call the greatest concert film ever made. Lee knows he’s not in competition; instead he’s gotten the opportunity to build the second bookend, thirty-five years later. Another thank-you is extended to Colin Kaepernick, whose image is briefly projected onto the stage when Byrne and company take a knee.
American Utopia doesn’t have a plot — it’s an hour and forty-five minutes of Byrne and Talking Heads songs, plus something that’s not quite stage banter and not quite a monologue. It expresses the essence of this moment in America: the fraying and dissolution of community understanding. The action begins with Byrne holding a giant plastic brain (after the song “Here”) and explaining how scientists have discovered that infant minds are brimming with connective pathways, which disappear as they get older. The show is an effort to beat a drum and get them back.
In American Utopia, Lee sinks his teeth into a crafty production that toured the globe, then had an extended run at New York’s Hudson Theater. (It was due to return before the pandemic happened.) Byrne and his 11 collaborators wear gray suits with no shoes, and play instruments without cables. All are dancing, even the keyboard player and percussionists, who wear harnesses. The stage has beaded curtains on three sides, with lights (and the camera) often emerging from behind them.
Byrne is the star, but each member of the group is fascinating in their own way. Percussionist Jacqueline Acevedo plays congas with the radiance of a 30s film star; guitarist Angie Swan shreds with a fierceness; and bassist Bobby Wooten III spends each moment on stage looking like he’s having the best time of his life. All hit highly choreographed marks, but the two instrument-less backup vocalists/dancers, Tendayi Kuumba and Chris Giarmo, are explosions of unconventional energy. In Stop Making Sense, Byrne literally started sprinting laps around the stage during “Life During Wartime.” He doesn’t take a breath here—but he is, come on, in his late 60s now. It’s a good idea for him to delegate some of that workload.
The song selection is broad, stretching from the first Talking Heads album 77 (“Don’t Worry About The Government”) through Heads classics (“Burning Down The House,” “Once In A Lifetime,” “Blind”) and deep cuts (“Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)”), to one of Byrne’s collaborations with Brian Eno (“One Fine Day” from Everything That Happens Will Happen Today), to tracks from the recent American Utopia album. Each number has, for lack of a better term, a gimmick. Footlights cast huge shadows on the back curtain during one song; the band “wakes up” to play after being strewn about the floor for another. Lee shoots from above as lights create hopscotch boxes for everyone to bounce around in, or to later form concentric circles.
Lee’s films often have a “production number” element to them; what is Do The Right Thing if not an opera with various arias (Radio Raheem explaining love and hate) and Sweet Dick Willie and his two pals acting as Greek chorus? Here, his imprimatur is felt most strongly when Byrne covers Janelle Monáe’s protest song “Hell You Talmbout.” During the fiery anthem, which lists the names of African Americans killed by police or mob violence with encouragements to “say his/her name”, Lee cuts to large printed images of the deceased. Some pictures, like those of Sean Bell and Eric Garner, are held by their loved ones. The song is inspiring and infuriating both—considering the need to make additions like Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.
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