Saw this over the weekend - boy, I seem to be catching a few of these doc’s since I also caught Pearl Jam’sand the Scorsese doc about George Harrison.
Okay - this one: directed by Davis Guggenheim - the guy behind It Might Get Loud, the guitar documentary featuring Jack White, Jimmy Page and The Edge (oh, and DG did Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, too…). I found It Might Get Loud to be worth seeing, but with issues (scroll down to post #18 for my review).
Davis Guggenheim did much better with this one - I am not a big U2 fan, although I certainly respect the impact that they have had as pretty much the biggest band of the past 10 - 20 years (quibble if you want; you get the gist). And Achtung Baby is certainly my favorite CD of theirs - it’s the only one I’ve purchased and stands out for its overall quality to my ears.
This doc is about getting to the point where the band could make AB. They discuss the success of the Joshua Tree and how it positioned them a bit out of sync with who they truly were - the Anton Corbijn photos and the songs were much more intense and heavy when they were having fun conquering America. But Rattle and Hum left them feeling like twits - deservedly so, and the director of R&H, Phil Joannou is not really mentioned but has a quick clip of him filming them that makes him look like a douche.
Anyway, so this all leads to the move to Berlin and starting work, but not knowing where to go - starting on Mysterious Ways (called something different) and pulling out a set of bridge chords from that work and evolving those chords to the song One which is revealed to be about how the band needs to come back together and carry each other, which they do in order to get back on track and complete the album. You don’t even hear “Even Better Than the Real Thing” until the closing credits…
What worked was that story seemed to be in the band’s own voice. And say what you want about Bono, but he is the heart and soul of that band - deeply articulate and at times over-salesy, but a damned genius at getting folks moving in the same direction to achieve big goals. The other guys come off well - it was great to hear the producer Flood describe Larry Mullen Jr. as “completely self-taught, so everything he does is…wrong” and how Larry’s not being able to sync with the drum machines that Edge and Bono wanted for a more Euro-sound was part of the problem…
Guggenheim seems to spell out every narrated comment on film, resorting to cartoons and diagrams when the raw footage wasn’t available - much more like An Inconvenient Truth vs. It Might Get Loud.
Overall, a well-made doc about an interesting period for an interesting band - I enjoyed it even though I am not a big fan…