With “Once in a Lifetime” opening Ride Rise Roar, the latest David Byrne concert film, you can't help but think of Stop Making Sense. Like Jonathan Demme's striking 1984 tribute to the Talking Heads, filmmaker David Hillman Curtis wasn't simply documenting shows as they transpired but was directing an artfully designed spectacle, carefully choreographed (with wiggle room for inspiration), exquisitely lighted and shot from every advantageous angle.
In Ride Rise Roar, the band and the dancers are dressed all in white, the color of Byrne's hair. The trademark awkward body language of his early years—reminiscent of an uncertain TA in front of a classroom for the first time—has mellowed into an expected stance and the dancers seem to take their cue from that as well as the circular, hip-swiveling rhythms of his music.
Ride Rise Roar cuts from Byrne's 2008-09 tour for clips from rehearsals and interviews with dancers, backing musicians and Byrne and Eno, who had just completed an album together. The newer songs held up well in proximity to the Heads' hits. The minimalist abstraction of the dancers set against the driving rock energy (and often intentionally one beat shy of the music) cast the artifice of Byrne's stage production in high relief. Ride Rise Roar is out May 31 on Blu-ray and DVD.
