David Byrne's American Utopia

 

 

 

David Byrne and Spike Lee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DAVID BYRNE'S AMERICAN UTOPIA                   B                                                            USA  (105 minutes)  2020  d:  Spike Lee

This film is a joyous antidote to the supreme narrowmindedness of the current political climate which verges on white nationalism to white supremacism, including a closing of our borders, a growing contempt for immigrants, with petty grievance issues cropping up everywhere, so instead of a united country, we are more fractured than ever along racial lines and class differences, disseminating falsehoods with regularity from the highest authority in the land, undermining any hope of unity and trust.  The American Dream of a safe haven inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, literally a beacon of light shining across the globe, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” has been summarily dismissed.  America has reneged on its promise, replaced instead by fear and acrimony, and what might be described as divisive hate politics, creating unending frustration for a nation that refuses to live up to its ideals of freedom and equality, as conceived by the original Founding Fathers and paid for in blood in Abraham Lincoln’s most eloquent Civil War Gettysburg Address, “Our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”  That dream is withering as we speak.  Trump and Southerners from the Republican Party have expanded on the racialized Southern Strategy, now adopting it as a national strategy, creating this whole notion of agitating white fear, also to marginalize, to racialize the elections, and suppress the power of the black vote.  Enter Talking Heads frontman David Byrne and his collection of percussion-oriented global rhythms, featuring an international cast of 11 musicians, including two primary dancers, Chris Giarmo, owning his queerness, wearing a glaring excess of facial make-up, and the ever-limber Tendayi Kuumba, one white and one black, one man and one woman, both seemingly in their own worlds when it comes to modernist dance interpretations, where it’s strange to see dancers wearing suits, yet their presence is not unlike the free-form dancers from the old Sun Ra Arkestra, attuned to a cosmic philosophy, channeling interplanetary forces.  Entirely minimalist, without an ounce of overkill, the visual conception recreates Byrne’s quirky concert film STOP MAKING SENSE (1984) directed by Jonathan Demme when Byrne partnered with choreographer Twyla Tharp, devising his own stage lighting, and even includes four of the original songs, like David Byrne's American Utopia - Burning Down the House YouTube (4:20).  What you’d never know is that this film is directed by Spike Lee, perhaps his whitest venture since 25th Hour (2002), though both are love letters to the city of New York, yet few of his typical signature effects are present, feeling like a more conventional recreation of a Broadway show that happened to run for 6-months during fall and winter of 2019 before the Covid pandemic closed down all theaters earlier this year.  There is no sign of Covid here, no masks, no social distancing, so it’s an expression of an earlier time when performances were sold out and audiences were free to express their wild enthusiasm.  There is a very brief strobe light sequence, turning figures into black and white, a throwback to earlier music videos, and the film stock changes from high-def to a commercial grade at the end when performers go into the audience, greeted enthusiastically by patrons capturing the experience on their phones, yet few special effects are employed, instead emphasizing a collective humanity from the performers.  There’s a curious postscript showing cast members on bikes making their way through New York City traffic, all bundled up in winter attire, reflecting Byrne’s avid cycling activism, using a bike as his main means of transport throughout the city, even writing a book on cycling in 2009 entitled Bicycle Diaries, N.Y./Region: David Byrne: Live on Two Wheels | The New York Times YouTube (4:27).

Spike Lee has done this sort of thing before, filming an earlier Broadway musical in the rarely seen PASSING STRANGE (2009), running just a few short months in 2008, winning a Tony Award for Best Book, yet that film was unlike anything the director had ever done before.  In stark contrast to his earlier concert film, David Byrne is older now (aged 67 during the filming), with a wave of white hair that he constantly brushes away from his face, seen wearing a microphone, where he continually interacts with the audience, maintaining a running dialogue, beginning with the idea that there are many more neuro brain connections in babies, that we tend to lose them as we age, which may mean we’re not as bright, but may also mean we simply discard the ones not deemed essential.  With that in mind, the show explores the ideas of human connection, self-evolution, and social justice, where the main thrust is one of empathy, where we can all improve ourselves by learning to respect others, suggesting listening and learning is the road to acquired knowledge, where the songs advocate a welcomed unity in spirit, literally rejuvenating many of the lost connections, reaffirming many of the ideals that have been cynically rejected by this political regime, where Trump and his group of loyal followers are more of a cult group than an organized political apparatus, spreading misinformation while endorsing every known conspiracy theory that was previously only published in disgraced tabloids like The National Enquirer, which regularly published stories of UFO sightings and Martian invasions.  Who knew that fearmongering would become the prevailing mantra from an American President and his minions, suppressing any and all contrary views that don’t coincide with his own, creating an alarmist autocratic dive into the gutter of utter despair where dreams only die from disuse.  Byrne reminds us that a mere 55% of eligible Americans voted in the 2016 Presidential election, while only 20% vote for local elections, suggesting a vast majority remain indifferent to the outcome.  While this lacks the imagination of the Jonathan Demme film, which was a revelation when it was released, it does reaffirm just how valuable artists are on the global landscape, as they offer alternative paths to the dreary road we’re on, wherever we may be.  Featuring strangely robotic choreography by Annie-B Parsons, with Alex Timbers as production consultant, the film is an immersive experience offering the best seats in the house, adding an element of intimacy, though its fascination with close-ups may detract from an overall conception, yet it jettisons the viewer away from any conformist mindset, even as all performers are dressed exactly the same in standard gray suits, everyone barefoot, featuring a grey-lined stage, where it may as well be imagined futuristic prison attire, yet the songs themselves attempt to break free of the hermetic bubble we all seem to be living in, liberating our minds and hearts that seem to have slowly atrophied from disuse in Trump’s America, David Byrne - One Fine Day with Brooklyn Youth ... - YouTube (5:07).  Byrne reminds us of our better selves, where the people around us matter, growing ecstatic simply by just being together, becoming a Whitmanesque ode to America, viewed as a work in progress, extolling the virtues of a utopian community that never seems to materialize, that may exist only in our imaginations.  As he introduces the song “Everybody’s Coming to My House,” that unbridled joy is also met with the thought that some people might be overstaying their welcome, like Buñuel’s THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962), where in some part of your mind you might actually wish they’d leave, David Byrne Performs 'Everybody's Coming To My House' (4:13, with Byrne and the cast literally taking over the set of The Stephen Colbert Show).

More than 30 years ago Byrne was described in The New Yorker by film critic Pauline Kael, Stop Making Sense | The Stacks Reader, “Byrne has a withdrawn, disembodied sci-fi quality, and though there’s something unknowable and almost autistic about him, he makes autism fun.”  Perhaps with that in mind, he conceives a song like this, knowingly awkward and decidedly different, but accentuating his own individuality, suggesting he is who he is, David Byrne's American Utopia - I Dance Like This YouTube (3:29).  While acknowledging “We’re only tourists in this life,” Byrne has a way of singing in character, where he openly questions everything, identifying with various points of view, as if providing an existentialist travel guide, at times a psychopath, a televangelist, a domestic terrorist, where he has a knack for making the familiar feel strange and mysterious.  Continually pursuing various trains of thought, he recalls how the Dadaist Movement of the 30’s was a response to rising fascism while occurring during the economic blight of the Great Depression, using nonsense and absurdity to make sense of the times, while early on in his young, still developing life it seemed healthy to watch plenty of TV, holding out hope that it might set him free, literally stepping into the television in one musical number, like a scene out of David Cronenberg’s VIDEODROME (1983), but there are no apocalyptic insinuations.  The most harrowing revelations come from a borrowed Janelle Monáe protest song that he saw her perform at a 2017 woman’s march in Washington, Hell You Talmbout - David Byrne's American Utopia YouTube (4:44), wondering if it would be equally effective when told from a white point of view, shouting out the names of black victims killed at the hands of the police, updated to include the more recent deaths driving the George Floyd protests, with Lee including photos of the deceased, along with photos of their mothers, just like Monáe did when she brought the mothers onstage with her when she initially performed the song.  The call and response effect is profoundly moving, a cathartic release from the incurred trauma of having to lament a neverending line of victims going back to slavery times (Police shoot, kill nearly 1,000 yearly – Investigative Reporting ...), breaking into a percussion-led marching band format, like a procession of New Orleans second-liners, instilling the idea of boldly choosing freedom over fear.  Lee’s cinematographer Ellen Kuras intercuts front row shots of the entire stage, moving back and forth to each side, along with shots from the back of the stage, and even a ceiling provided camera, but there are no dazzling Busby Berkeley formations.  Arguably the best shots are close-ups on Byrne’s face, pensive, absorbed, seemingly void of emotion, yet his calm demeanor dramatically contrasts with the enthusiastic musical energy happening onstage. The origins of this show, oddly enough, happened to be Byrne’s reading of French historian and political writer Alexis de Tocqueville’s 19th century two-volume Democracy in America while on tour, where many of the chapter titles are actually open questions, anticipating many problems that still lay ahead, where a new nation at the time was viewed as an experiment, but the future was open-ended, offering a utopian sense of what could still be achieved.  It is this sense of optimism that drives the Broadway production, and while there are occasional lapses, especially towards the end, mostly it provides a sense of well-earned urgency, with the entire band marching off into the audience in the rousing finale, David Byrne - Road To Nowhere - New York - Hudson Theatre - 10/4/2019 - American Utopia YouTube (5:21), reminding us exactly where we currently find ourselves, where the last four years have felt like living in a black hole, or maybe the dark ages.  

Post Script

One sticking point in the show is that David Byrne uses several songs made popular by the Talking Heads as if they are his sole and exclusive property, yet they were written in collaboration with other artists who aren't being credited.  It seems to me that in a Broadway show that questions our humanity and our shared connections with others, this misappropriation would be rectified.  

Harriet

Harriet Tubman

Director Kasi Lemmons (left) on the set with her actors

HARRIET             B-                   

USA  (125 mi)  2019  d: Kasi Lemmons

I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other, for no man should take me alive.

―Harriet Tubman

Since so much of what we know about Harriet Tubman comes from children’s books, this is told like a children’s story, or like an often mythologized fable, which is how her story has been handed down through the years.  Tubman herself was illiterate and never learned to read or write, so specific details about her life remain sketchy, as they are largely first or second hand accounts, so much of her life has already been fictionalized.  Adhering to admitted hero worship, this feels designed to be etched into the minds of school children who watch it in their classrooms, with blacks finally having a role model they can call their own.  But the problem is this isn’t a representation of history, instead it’s a saintly portrayal, accentuating the heroism, embellishing history by turning her into a superhero, like something out of Marvel comics, where her initial fight to freedom by running away from slavery on her own from Dorchester County in Maryland to safe protection in the north in Philadelphia simply defied all odds, but to turn around and do it over and over again (nineteen times), each time collecting additional family members and an assemblage of more slaves, and be successful at it time after time, never losing anyone along the way, eventually rescuing more than 300 slaves to freedom over a ten year period on what is now called the Underground Railroad, is simply a phenomenal act of heroism and courage.  Yet the formation of the Railroad, with its many network of friends and safe places, is underemphasized in this film, as Harriet prefers to go it alone, giving her Messianic attributes, using song to call out slaves from the fields, like a bonafide Pied Piper, where this is an example where legend prevails over reality.  Placing her trust in God, she defies the existence of slavery as a moral abomination, with the film minimizing the more barbaric aspects, though it remains front and center through the acts of a few vile white characters brazenly emboldened with white supremacy, namely the slave owners of her family who relentlessly track her down, along with an assortment of particularly brutal hired slave catchers (two of them black men, historically fabricated, claiming poetic license, with one eventually joining sides with her, accentuating the choice of good over evil), turning her into an American Joan of Arc character, threatened with burning at the stake if captured, yet similarly convinced of her religious convictions, displaying an ability to lead battalions into battle, as she did for the Union forces in the Civil War, proving that adversity can be overcome through moral strength of character and a righteous conviction of good over evil.  Using African mythmaking and oral traditions as a film style, this heroine actually possesses supernatural powers, suffering from spells where she remains inert, falling to the ground, unable to move, as if struck by seizures, yet she’s able to see visions shortly before they actually happen, something she attributes to God, though this may be the result of a skull fracture she suffered at the hands of an overzealous slave master.  What’s essential to understand is that she constantly risks death for the benefit of others, routinely accomplishing what others think can’t be done, becoming a highly influential figure in the nation’s abolition of slavery.  

With British actress (with Nigerian heritage) Cynthia Erivo from Widows (2018) chosen to play Harriet, this created a backlash, stirring the waters of resentment, as Erivo has a history of controversial tweets aimed at belittling and mocking black Americans that many still find offensive, despite her contention that they were taken out of context.  Others have decided to boycott the film because the distributor Focus Features is owned by Comcast, a telecommunications conglomerate that may be violating the Reconstruction era Civil Rights Act of 1866 in bypassing the interests of black Americans in their programming, not only shunning black cable outlets but refusing to even consider race at all as a factor, questioning what constitutes fair representation, which is the subject of a current racial discrimination lawsuit (Supreme Court Hears Racial Discrimination Case Against ...).  In that same vein, some are outraged by the filmmaker’s choice to depict black slave catchers, with pretensions of being the best in all of the South, which is a complete historical fabrication, as they did not exist, yet the filmmakers are attempting to express the depths of corruption in the institution of slavery, where it was deeper than skin color, that the motivation of greed was so great that it could affect anyone.  Yet this undermines the historical narrative of how black men were actually victims of slavery, not the perpetrators of its violence.  By resorting to historical inaccuracies, Kasi Lemmons, the heralded black female director of such poetically rich films as EVE’S BAYOU (1997), also featuring a clairvoyant character, and TALK TO ME (2007), with Taraji P. Henson doing her own exaggerated Foxey Brown imitation, may have inadvertently continued the disturbing negative stereotype of the black male in movies.  But after all is said and done, it turns out Erivo is not the problem with the film, and is instead one of its greatest strengths, while the narrative is simplistic and all too predictable, leaving little in doubt, where we actually learn next to nothing about Harriet Tubman, never rising to the level of a Civil War epic, where the biggest surprise is the choice to use a formulaic and more conventional biographical structure, which is a 180 degree turn from her previous films, which distinguished themselves by taking great risks.  Maybe it’s a new era in filmmaking, where the fear of financing black history is considered too great a risk, with producers only wanting to finance what they consider sure winners, forcing the filmmakers to play to a specific target audience.  It feels like the same mistake Steven Spielberg made with THE COLOR PURPLE (1985) and AMISTAD (1997), where the intent was to be informative, yet in the interests of making it understandable for school children, even printing out accompanying resource material for classrooms, they fudged some of the facts, altering the historical reality. 

The film opens in Dorchester County in Maryland, with Araminta Ross (Harriet), known as “Minty,” looking to start a family with John Tubman (Zachary Momoh), who was a free black man.  Marriage between a slave and a free man was not uncommon in this part of the country, the Eastern shore of Maryland, as over half the black population was free.  Marriages, however, were not legally bound, but an informal arrangement.  Any children born follow the mother’s status, so if they are free, the children are born free, but if they remain slaves, their children would be born into slavery.  Minty’s father was also a free man who continued to help out for income, while her mother remained a slave, working in the main house.  Under a Manumission Agreement with the former slave owner (now deceased), her mother was to be freed at the age of 45, also applying to any of her children, but his son, the current owner Edward Brodess (Mike Marunde), rips up the agreement in defiance, claiming he has no intention of honoring a piece of paper, angry that they hired an attorney to read the provisions, as if that amounted to insubordination.  His son Gideon (Joe Alwyn), who befriended Minty as a child, having nursed him back to health following typhoid, now rubs her nose in the depravity of her situation, reminding her who’s boss, never letting her forget it.  Facing a life in bondage, however, is more than she can stand, willing to risk death, so despite her husband’s objections, not wanting to jeopardize his free status, she sets off on foot for Philadelphia, about 100 miles away, evading the main roads and bridges, remaining hidden throughout the journey, though there are unnamed white farmers along the way who willingly help, transporting her hidden in their cargo, shielding her from detection.  In Philadelphia she meets William Still (Leslie Odom Jr.), an ardent abolitionist who transcribes the story of each escaped slave (historical records have been published), allowing her to choose a free name, introducing her to Marie Buchanon (Janelle Monáe), a free-born black woman who owns her own home, quickly offering a room while putting her to work.  Missing her family, she decides to return for them, but this turns out to be much more difficult than expected, as guards are posted on the roads, with slave catchers, along with her nemesis Gideon, who plots revenge.  Changing laws make it even more difficult, like the Fugitive Slave Act, requiring slaves be returned to their rightful owners, even in free states, driving them even further into Canada, adding a growing sense of desperation leading into the Civil War.  While it attempts to feature historical abolitionists, with Harriet offering a fiery speech that convinces them in no uncertain terms not to lose sight of what’s at stake, literally obsessed with freeing slaves in bondage, a practice that continues while joining the Union Army, becoming the first woman in U.S. history to lead an armed military raid at Combahee Ferry, demonstrating the value of black troops in combat while liberating more than 700 escaped slaves.  Much of the film is shot in actual historical locations, beautifully captured by cinematographer John Toll, particularly the back woods and streams, adding a degree of authenticity to what we see, making this not only harrowing, but a strange and mystical journey, made even more exhilarating by adding the choice music of Nina Simone, Nina Simone - Sinnerman (vinyl rip) YouTube (10:12), though much of the film feels contrived and rushed at the end (cut for budgetary reasons), adding mythical scenes for effect, though all along she believes she is God’s ambassador carrying out His will.  Living into her 90’s, the film relies upon an onscreen scrolling text to detail all her accomplishments, some of which might seem surprising, effectively elevating her status with the public at large, yet much of her real humanity remains elusively out of reach.