DAVID BYRNE’S AMERICAN UTOPIA

OUT 11 JANUARY / CERT 12 / 105 MINS

A performance film as profound and ebullient as David Byrne and Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense should only happen — dare we say it — once in a lifetime. Yet with American Utopia, an end-of-run staging of Byrne’s Broadway show directed by Spike Lee, the former Talking Heads frontman has delivered one more milestone in the concert movie cannon.

Between a peerless setlist of the band’s crowd-pleasers, solo work and collaborations, Byrne — besuited, barefoot, and openly off-kilter — speaks self-deprecatingly about the things that matter to him, from voting and connections to crisps. Behind the camera, Lee obliterates the audience divide with intimate framing of Byrne and his 11-strong band, here harnessed to their instruments for a freer, more kinetic performance. Galvanising and comforting all at once, American Utopia is Byrne’s most personal and political piece of work yet.