Let’s get the obvious joke out of the way first: no, despite being produced by Apple, this film will not be automatically and nonconsensually forced onto your iPhone. Unlike U2’s notorious 2014 album Songs Of Innocence, which one day magically appeared on the world’s Apple devices whether you liked it or not, you actually have a choice over whether to watch Bono: Stories Of Surrender. Which way you go with that choice rather depends on how big a fan you are.
This is an unusual proposition. A filmed version of Bono’s well-received one-man stage show — itself an adaptation of his memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story — Stories Of Surrender can’t really be called a documentary in the truest sense. There is no archive footage here, no childhood photos, no early recordings of the band. Filmed by Australian director Andrew Dominik in gorgeously crisp, contrast-heavy, black-and-white photography, it is essentially an arty concert film, centred around one man talking about himself for 90 minutes.
[Bono's] re-enactment of conversations with his late father are sweet, but other scenes just induce cringe...
To be fair to Bono, he seems well aware of what this looks like, and makes valiant efforts to pre-empt any vanity-project accusations, openly describing the evening as “preposterous navel-gazing”. He also shows commendable self-awareness during the section discussing his well-publicised activism against poverty, despite his status as a multi-millionaire, willingly accepting the term “hypocrite”.
But as refreshing as that is, it doesn’t quite alleviate the strangeness of this format. Bono’s story may work well on the page, but presented here, in a kind of mannered, performance-artist whisper, it all feels a bit daft. The stage is largely empty, save for a huge LED lighting rig and the odd prop, which might have worked gangbusters in person, but cinematically feels a bit empty and textureless.
Which leaves us with the curious experience of watching one of the world’s biggest rock stars doing some Edinburgh Fringe-style play-acting. His re-enactment of conversations with his late father are sweet, but other scenes just induce cringes: an extended impression of opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, a long-winded anecdote about Princess Diana, and in perhaps the film’s oddest moment, the perplexing sight of Bono romantically serenading and dancing with a chair, meant to represent his wife.
It’s hard to truly dislike this enterprise, because it’s all so utterly earnest: love him or hate him, Bono clearly really cares — about his activism, his family, and his art. We get some heartfelt tributes to his band, origin stories for his songs, and then some stripped-down renditions of those songs, backed by classical musicians. If you were already a Bono-sseur, it will be a treat. But this approach isn’t going to win over any converts. Just be glad it wasn’t automatically added to your phone.