![]() ![]() ![]() In this film, Lee moves the frame wherever he wants it, painting Byrne’s face with lens flare, filling the mobile proscenium of the TV screen with Angie Swan’s fingers or putting our seat in impossible places like the ceiling of the theater. In a work of theater, every member of the audience sees only what she can see from her place in the house. There is no place to hide on the blank stage or within the performers’ gray uniforms, and Lee doesn’t need one. Opinion Spike Lee's 'Da 5 Bloods' tackles white wealth and the Black lives lost making itīut you can’t film Byrne singing "Once in a Lifetime" without going toe-to-toe with Jonathan Demme’s Talking Heads documentary, “Stop Making Sense,” which is arguably the greatest concert film ever made even by that high standard, Lee holds his own. The light appears on the stage in relentlessly even shapes, and the curtain, made of dangling strands of chain, is sometimes parted to allow a musician to emerge or to poke the big circular belly of a drum into view of the audience while the drummer stays concealed, except for his hands. I saw the show live on Broadway in the era when that was still possible, but I did notice things in Lee’s movie that I didn’t from the audience - especially the geometric framing of the performers. ![]() Lee's offering is a filmed staging of Byrne’s Broadway production of the same name, which was itself a hybrid creature - something between a short concert and a hugely entertaining existential monologue. He indicates another, "Here is a section that’s extremely concise." “Here is an area of great confusion,” he says, pointing to a pink wrinkle. 17, opens with David Byrne standing in a gray square of light, barefoot, wearing a gray suit, singing in his inimitable, melodic, nasal tenor about the brain he’s holding. Spike Lee’s film “American Utopia,” on HBO Max beginning Oct. ![]()
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