Bono: Stories Of Surrender film review: U2 front man’s compelling vulnerability
Apple TV+’s output may not yet compete with its rivals Netflix or Disney+, but the streaming service has used its association with music to create some very worthwhile documentaries, most notably, Bono: Stories of Surrender.
Beastie Boys Story, What Happened, Miss Simone?, and Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry are other examples of music titans teaming up with the streamer to tell their stories. That streak continues with Bono: Stories Of Surrender, which earned a five-minute standing ovation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Director Andrew Dominik (Blonde, Killing Them Softly) focuses on the U2 front man’s 2023 one man show at New York’s Beacon theatre. The documentary features Bono playing live, and when he puts his guitar down, he tells stories about his life and the lessons he’s learned.
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His stories veer from self-depreciating (he acknowledges that he may find his own story more interesting than the audience) to recounts from his 2016 heart surgery that are told with all the flourish of a Broadway veteran.
None of this is exactly modest, but there was always a charming duality to the Irish rocker. He has been both agitator and establishment, calling for societal change while being criticised for his lavish lifestyle travelling the world on stadium tours. Detractors may call him self-righteous or hypocritical, but for forty years those stadiums have been full, and every decade brings a new number one album. Songs Of Surrender, the band’s 2021 release, marked the fifth consecutive decade the band topped the charts.
Shot in black and white in front of a crowd of adoring fans, Bono: Stories Of Surrender becomes a kind of therapy session for the star, discussing how being “born with my fists up” has led to some fractious relationships in his life.
There’s a particular focus on his father. Bono paints the portrait of two men fractured by grief (Bono’s mother died when he was 14) and divided by his father’s unrealised dreams. “I craved my father’s attention; I wanted him to think that I had music in me too. He didn’t hear me,” he says with pain in his voice.
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There’s plenty of interesting chat about the band’s evolution – particularly the crisis of faith which lead him and The Edge to write the 1983 protest track Sunday Bloody Sunday, and a collaboration with Luciano Pavarotti that nearly led to an in-band revolt.
There are some dry showbiz anecdotes, and a lukewarm rebuke of those who call him a hypocrite for his activism (“motives don’t matter. Outcomes matter”), but for the most part it’s a vulnerable performance combined with glorious orchestral arrangements of his greatest hits.
Bono: Stories Of Surrender offers the tender confessions of one of rock and roll’s most celebrated practitioners. You may not leave with a changed view of the man, but you’ll almost certainly have more respect for his journey.