Director: Jonathan Demme
Year Released: 1984
Rating: 3.0
This concert film poses a problem for me: do I grade it on the quality of the songs, the importance of the picture or both? If solely on the music, it would get a high grade: Talking Heads were a super-influential art/avant-pop band from the late seventies to mid-eighties, lead by Davis Byrne and his trademark quixotic stage antics (whiny singing combined with performance art). But I'm going to be a bit more harsh than I should, thinking this: if you're making a movie called Stop Making Sense about a group of performers who do inexplicable, strange things, wouldn't it be best to ... I don't know ... explain them a little better? Scorsese's The Last Waltz was part documentary, part concert film and part one-time-only special event (the last tour of "The Band") with Marty and his editor effectively "mixed together" all the pieces; this film, despite being meticulously shot and edited (and lighted), offers nothing interesting about lead singer Byrne or his band mates, never seems important, and isn't visually diverse. The DVD is generous in giving audio commentary by a barely-there Demme and Byrne and the rest of the Heads - the most enlightening being Byrne's own commentary and explanation for, say, why he wears the famous "big suit" or dances with a lamp. Simply put, Demme's picture doesn't give us quite enough ... the songs are fine, but MTV, VH1 and other programs like Reverb on HBO show live, well-lit, artsy concerts from the audience's point of view all the time (namely, the truly strange Flaming Lips performance with fake blood and bizarre film clips) - isn't that the same thing? [Music: ***½, B+; Film: **½, C+]
