Maybe it was my reward from my surprise attendance to our mother's birthday party (400km to come), but the great U2 fan i'm only discovered this documentary by zapping channels on TV once the party was over.
Two years ago, when I watched all my U2 DVD and read the books, I remember to have been fed up with their pompous, grandiloquent speeches about themselves. Here, with their new documentary, it's the same thing: OK, they write the best songs, they are nice and respectable individual but hearing them (and especially, Bono) talking about their band is a excruciating moment. So they are exactly what they were told to be at the release of "Rattle & Hum" and this documentary shows that they haven't changed a bit in the following 20 years.
Past "Rattle & Hum", free for always from mundane needs, the band has reached the point when the only effort asked was to get together to produce songs. Strangely, their inspiration almost get drown as well as their Berlin experience was almost a disaster: they left it with barely a handful of songs.
Technically, the documentary reveals two gems: how a song ("one" in this case) found its melody in another one. For those who have listened to "Axtung Baby", they are already accustomed by those experimentations but here, the visual adds emotion. Next, Bono's free composition is funny, from babble to word to lyrics.
In a way, the documentary is interesting because it's an eye opener of how composition can be a painful process. But, regarding to U2, the process is almost a block as they indulge too much time, too much reflexion, too much expectations (= too much money?). When they released "Zooropa", they left all this behind and manage to produce an outstanding album in less than 1 year!
So instead of making books, movies, speeches about themselves and music, they just have to lock themselves in a studio for a month, like a papal conclave! This way, the fans would listen the so famous new album they keep talking the for he past 4 years now!
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