Stop Making Sense

1984  ·  PG  ·  Concert Film

The best argument for going — even when you almost didn’t.

Jonathan Demme’s film of the Talking Heads’ 1983 Stop Making Sense tour is the concert film against which all others are measured, and most do not measure up. It begins with David Byrne alone on stage with an acoustic guitar and a boom box, playing Psycho Killer to a nearly empty set. Over the next hour and forty minutes, the band assembles around him piece by piece — bass, drums, keyboards, backing singers, full percussion — until the stage is full and the sound is enormous. The structure is a piece of theatre as much as a documentary, and Demme understood that the best way to film a concert is to let the performance be the film. No cutaways to the audience. No interviews. Just the stage, the light, and one of the great live bands at the height of their powers.

Watch it the way you would attend the concert — with the volume up and nowhere to be afterward. It is ninety-nine minutes long and does not feel it. Byrne’s big suit, the choreography of Heaven, the escalating joy of Girlfriend Is Better — these are things that improve with a second viewing and a good room. Best shared, though it works alone. It has the specific quality of making you feel that you were there, and also that being there would have been one of the better evenings of your life. Which is exactly what a concert film should do.

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VERDICT  ·  The concert film. Full stop.

POUR  ·  Whatever you would have bought at the bar. Cold beer is correct here.

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Planning an evening around this? The Concert You Almost Skipped →

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