Source:
https://scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3033144/rise-concert-films-and-music-documentaries-pavarotti
Lifestyle/ Entertainment

The rise of concert films and music documentaries, from Pavarotti to Shakira, and the A-list directors, such as Ron Howard, drawn to the format

  • Metallica, Shakira, Bruce Springsteen, Depeche Mode, Roger Waters – all have turned to concert movies this year to reach out to fans
  • Meanwhile, documentary producers play to the nostalgia of older fans, and to younger music lovers who missed seeing stars in their prime
A still from the 2019 documentary film Pavarotti, directed by Ron Howard. It is one of a string of music documentaries and concert films being released this year.

If music be the food of love, play on, wrote William Shakespeare – but in Hollywood music is a source of money. Concert movies and music documentaries are in full swing, playing to nostalgic fans or those who missed out on concert tickets. As trade paper Variety recently put it: “Music docs are proliferating like mushrooms these days.”

This year has been a remarkable one for lovers of music, be it classical, contemporary, rock or pop. Top of the bill among music films is Pavarotti, Ron Howard’s non-fiction film about the most famous opera singer of them all. The film covers his early years, his rise to global fame, performing as part of The Three Tenors on the eve of the 1990 World Cup, and his personal traumas.

For Howard, one of the goals of the movie was to find an emotional through line using the famous arias sung by the Italian tenor.

“I said to Paul Crowder, our editor, ‘I feel like we can almost make an opera about Pavarotti using these arias.’ If we could find performances that can convey what he’s going through in his life or what he’s feeling, it could be a way to deepen audience connections to the music, because they begin to understand that these arias really are about narratives.”

A still from Pavarotti.
A still from Pavarotti.

Howard is no stranger to music documentaries. In 2013, he shot Made in America, which dealt with the eclectic Philadelphia musical festival of that name organised by hip-hop mogul Jay-Z. Examining “what it means to the city, what it signifies in America and in music”, it mixed together performance and backstage antics with interviews (Skrillex, the Hives and Janelle Monae).

He soon followed it with The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years , a film dealing with the Fab Four’s years on the road in the 1960s.

Howard isn’t the only A-list director to tackle the music doc as a fruitful sideline. Spike Lee made Bad 25 and Michael Jackson’s Journey From Motown to Off the Wall. The late Jonathan Demme shot documentaries on Kenny Chesney, Neil Young, Robyn Hitchcock and Talking Heads.

And, most famously, Martin Scorsese made exhaustive films on George Harrison and Bob Dylan, including this year’s Netflix-streamed account of the latter’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour.

It’s easy to see the appeal: with film and music such natural bedfellows, this medium offers the chance to train a very different sort of spotlight on musicians. In this year’s David Crosby: Remember My Name, the founding member of The Byrds is seen in what he calls “an honest portrayal” – a warts-and-all look at his tumultuous life seen through the prism of his 2017 tour and a series of interviews conducted with Almost Famous director Cameron Crowe.

Crowe also pitches up in Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, which had its premiere this year at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and sees the Grammy-winning 1970s megastar take us through her life and career. Fans of Stevie Wonder, The Supremes and Smokey Robinson, meanwhile, have been able to get their kicks in Hitsville: The Making of Motown, a hugely entertaining trip down memory lane with the Detroit record label’s founder, Berry Gordy.

Most excitingly, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson is sifting through 55 hours of in-studio footage of The Beatles shot in 1969 when the band was recording its final album, Let It Be. Jackson has already called it “the ultimate ‘fly on the wall’ experience” – a rare chance to see the group at work (and perfect for the legions of fans deprived of seeing the 1970 film Let It Be, which has long been out of circulation).

Alongside the music doc, the concert movie is also thriving. Already this year, we’ve seen (and heard) Pink Floyd legend Roger Waters in Us + Them, a spectacular record of his last epic concert tour directed by Sean Evans (who previously captured on film Waters’ The Wall stage show). Waters’ reason for making the film was simple: to “make a record” of the globe-trotting tour and give visual context to the songs.

There are other reasons to bring concerts to the big screen – such as the reluctance of an artist to tour. While Bruce Springsteen has never been one to deprive his fans of the live encounter, 2019’s Western Stars – his first album in five years – had a different flavour. Meditating on love, landscape, family and community, the record came complete with sweeping orchestral arrangements.

“It was an unusual piece of music,” Springsteen explained last week while attending the London Film Festival, “so I knew I wasn’t going to tour on it and bring an orchestra … it was just pragmatic to think of what I could do to help support the record, so I said, ‘Well, if I’m not going to perform it, maybe we could perform it once and film it. That way people get a chance to see what it’s like to play it.’”

Directed by Thom Zimny, the film, Western Stars, lets viewers see Springsteen close up as he performs songs from the album in front of a small private audience in the beautiful, 140-year-old barn on his property in Colts Neck, New Jersey. In between the 13 tracks, he muses about his life and work; perfect, then, for all those that didn’t score tickets to see Springsteen on Broadway in New York.

While Western Stars will receive a wide release, producers of some concert films are giving them a limited release to encourage fans to flock to cinemas in unison. Heavy-metal messiahs Metallica have just released S&M², the film of their recent gigs with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (a 20th anniversary reunion, following their 1999 collaboration). Its cinematic run? Just two nights.

Likewise electropop giants Depeche Mode will release for “one night only” on November 6 Spirits in the Forest, a film of the final concert of their last tour, in Berlin, directed by the band’s long-term visual collaborator Anton Corbijn, that tells the story of six fans who attended it. In the same month, pop lovers can also see Shakira in Concert: El Dorado World Tour, a film shot on the Colombian songstress’ last tour, which will be shown in 2,000 cinemas in 60 countries.

Bruce Springsteen arrives for the London premiere of the film Western Stars. Photo: Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP
Bruce Springsteen arrives for the London premiere of the film Western Stars. Photo: Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP

Will these music movies become box office hits? It’s more than possible. Justin Bieber: Never Say Never grossed a staggering US$99 million worldwide, while Katy Perry: Part of Me took a not-insignificant US$32 million.

True, both are current pop idols rather than blasts from the past. But, with the live experience having become a major revenue stream for the music industry, this feels like a natural extension.

Maybe the next step is virtual reality – then you’ll really feel like you’re at the concert.

A still from Ron Howard’s film The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years.
A still from Ron Howard’s film The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years.

Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook