Blogorium Review: Ride, Rise, Roar

 Approaching my review for Ride, Rise, Roar, a documentary / performance film for David Byrne, I find myself constantly trying to avoid comparing the film to Jonathan Demme's Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense. On one level, it just isn't fair to Ride Rise Roar to be held to that kind of standard; if you've never seen Stop Making Sense, it is arguably one of the best concert films ever made. Demme's shot composition, camerawork, and editing not only complement the music, but elevate it.

 I'm trying to give Ride Rise Roar the benefit of the doubt and treat David Hillman Curtis' film as something not trying to be like Stop Making Sense, even if the comparisons come easily and frequently.

The film begins with an interpretation of "Once in a Lifetime" that is baffling on two levels: 1) it seems as though Byrne is trying to keep himself interested in a song he's no doubt sung to death, but the choice he makes (to pose the lyrics as a series of flat, disinterested questions) is immediately off-putting. This is compounded by 2) the presence of interpretive dancers, who seem to be doing whatever they feel like without any connection to the music. Since Byrne doesn't seem to be very interested in "Once in a Lifetime," I can't honestly say one part is more distracting than the other, but it's an odd way to start a movie, and not "good" odd.


Fortunately, the interview footage that follows provides some context: while wrapping up mixing on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, Byrne's collaboration with Brian Eno, the singer / songwriter accepted a series of tour dates. In order to keep things fresh, Byrne reached out to a number of choreographers (Annie-B Parson, Sonya Robbins, Layla Childs, and Noémie Lafrance) to create a free flowing, interpretive combination of modern dance and pop music. He also requested they find non-professionals (?) and prohibited them from learning any particular routine, instead preferring they find the "right" movements as the song progressed. By mimicking each other, they would create a complementary visual element to the music.

 And that might work, if the staging weren't so claustrophobic: Byrne is playing in front of a full band with back-up singers perhaps five feet behind him. His dancers don't have much room, and on top of that, he chose to narrow down the number to three (Lily Baldwin, Natalie Kuhn, and Stephen Reker), which further underwhelms whatever it was he had in mind. When Byrne is engaged with the dances, there's a sort of symmetry, but more often than not the staging is two on one side and one on the other with Byrne in the middle. It may just be the way that Curtis shoots the performance, but the end result is often flat and disengaged, which seems to be the opposite of what David Byrne had in mind. It's not until the dancers bring the back-up singers into the choreography of "I Zimbra" that the film has any sense of life.

Ride, Rise, Roar also settles quickly into a repetitive motion of performance - interview (black and white) - performance (color), sometimes interspersing the live show with rehearsal footage (also black and white) but otherwise sticks with what works. I hate to even bring this up, but the way Curtis covers the live performance, it's often unclear that there IS an audience, especially early in the film. If I hadn't eventually seen the heads of  the crowd, I was inclined to believe that parts the film were simply stage rehearsal being passed off as "concert documentary." There's no sense of performance, which once again brings me back to Stop Making Sense. There's a kinetic energy to that footage, something lacking in Ride, Rise, Roar, despite the animated vocal delivery from Byrne, that just doesn't make sense.

 I'm almost positive that someone with a better background in dance would find Ride, Rise, Roar more interesting than I did. It pains me to say that, as a huge fan of David Byrne (both with the Heads and also solo), but the film struggles to stay interesting as it slogs along. There's a discussion of how Byrne and Eno worked together on the album that should be more engaging than it is. It's also fair to mention that the dancers will also arbitrarily disappear during the show without the explanations typically lavished elsewhere during interviews.

On an intellectual level, I know it isn't fair, but watching Ride, Rise, Roar and not making mental comparisons to Stop Making Sense is going to be difficult for anyone interested in watching this film. It only compounds Ride, Rise, Roar's existing problems in that not only are you watching a movie that isn't very engaging, but it reminds you of the film about roughly the same subject that is exactly the opposite experience. Even in attempting to disassociate one from the other, I found myself bored during Ride, Rise, Roar, and that's the biggest shame of it all.