U23D
DIR: Catherine Owens, Mark Pellington • PRO: John Modell, Catherine Owens, Jon Shapiro, Peter Shapiro • DOP: Peter Anderson, Tom Krueger • ED: Olivier Wicki • CAST: Bono, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr., The Edge

As a live band, there is no one like U2. Whatever your opinion of the band themselves, their public personas, or their thirty-year recording career, there are few who can deny that as a living, breathing spectacle, U2 are one of, if not the, finest live band on the planet. U23D sees the band – not for the first time – attempting to bottle the lightning of their live shows, while at the same time experimenting with the new format. With this purpose in mind, and although neither previous cinematic outing U2: Rattle and Hum nor live album Under a Blood Red Sky are without their charm, U23D is easily the closest the band have come to recreating the thrill of their live performances.

Taken from the South American leg of the band’s Vertigo tour, the setup will be familiar to fans as it’s more or less the same show as the band brought to Croke Park two years ago, and has already been filmed for their Live in Chicago DVD. It’s as ‘back-to-basics’ rock show as you can get in front of 80,000 people (although U2 are perhaps the only band in the world where a 60-foot video screen is seen as a return to their roots), the set list is a solid mix of older material (‘Zooropa’ and ‘Joshua Tree’ are both given plenty of airing) and songs from 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Free of any of the behind-the-scenes material that made up much of Rattle and Hum, and lacking any major incident or interesting backdrop, the focus is simply on the music itself. As a concert film, it’s breathtaking; as a U2 show, it’s business as usual.

Where U23D unquestionably succeeds, however, is as a testament to the power and possibilities of this new technology. The first live action film to be presented in Digital 3D, U23D rarely falls short of a truly stunning audio/visual experience. The beautiful title sequence sets the tone – we take the audience’s point of view as people run through turnstiles, as the directors use their new technology to enhance traditional photographic effects like lens-flare. From then on it’s pure spectacle, as the various 3D effects serve to heighten the feeling of actually being there. When the camera sits in the pit with the audience, cups of water splash over your head and thousands of raised hands bob up and down in front of your face. On stage, you duck as the Edge nearly pokes you in the eye with his guitar, and squint as the many strobe lights reflect off of Larry Mullen’s drum kit. Whereas previous experiments with this technology have suffered from a tendency to deliberately throw things in the audience’s lap for the sake of it, here the 3D serves the subject matter rather than distracts from it. Only towards the end (appropriately enough, during the overly earnest costume encore of ‘The Fly’) do the directors throw some gratuitous 3D text at you, by which point you’ll already be sold on the technique anyway.

The highlights come thick and fast. ‘Vertigo’ is as good an opening number as ever, while at the other end of the spectrum a haunting performance of ‘Miss Sarajevo’ reminds you that the band could fill four shows worth with classics from their back catalogue. Most extraordinary of all is ‘Love and Peace or Else’, which sees Larry take the drum-kit out on to the ‘runway’ and into the audience. Naturally, there is a bit of the band’s infamous melodramatic touches –  the point at which Bono wears a bandana that says ‘co-exist’ in religious symbols may be too much for those sitting on the fence to take – but the directors wisely keep the focus primarily on the music.

If nothing else, U23D is a tantalising taste of things to come. By the time the end credits float out of the screen at you, accompanied by an acoustic version of ‘Yahweh’, even the most ardent U2 dissenter cannot fail to be intrigued by the possibilities of the format. The idea that James Cameron is currently shooting sci-fi epic Avatar with this technology in mind is even more exciting. Even better than the real thing? Not quite, but it’s as close as you’ll get to seeing the Biggest Band in the World up close and personal.

Scott Townsend
(Read biog here)

Rated TBC (see IFCO website for details)
U23Dopens in digital 3D cinemas in Ireland on 22nd February 2008
U23D – Official website