Occasionally, I will go against my own rules to cover a film too interesting to ignore. Concert Films are documentaries, but the choices Jonathan Demme and David Byrne make in filming the band Talking Heads over three nights at the Hollywood’s Pantages Theater make this a very cinematic experience, and I would love to be able to say I was there for the production.
I’m not even a fan of Talking Heads music, though this turned me around on some of it. My first exposure to them was the music video for “Once in a Lifetime” which I thought was annoying. David Byrne’s performance art style rubbed me the wrong way, and one of my favorite things about the film is that it starts small. “Psycho Killer” is one of my favorite songs from Talking Heads and the presentation here is intimate. The band is then introduced one song at a time, building to “Burning Down the House”.
Looking at the playlist, I was familiar with seven of the sixteen tunes, but I’ve returned to the SMS experience about a half-dozen times because of the way Demme handles each number and also the full concert experience. Any other concert film is episodic by its nature. This is not. That’s why it lives up to its acclaim as the Greatest Concert Film of All Time.
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