“Depeche Mode: M”, dancing about life and death without tragedy

“Depeche Mode: M”, dancing about life and death without tragedy

ByJohn

From the stage of Foro Sol in Mexico Citymemory and loss are intertwined with the energy of a vibrant present. Like an echo perfectly attuned to Mexican culture and its unique way of celebrating mortality, “Memento Mori” by Depeche Mode turns into I invite you to exorcise death and rediscover your vitality in the passing time. “Remember that you must die”, says the Latin phrase chosen as the title of the band’s fifteenth album, the first work by Dave Gahan and Martin Gore after the sudden death of Andy Fletcher, co-founder and backbone of the group. Death is not an end, but a transformation, a passage, as in Día de Muertos, between colorful flowers, dancing skeletons and illuminated altars. Opening the doors of a world suspended between life and death, the director Fernando Frias amplifies the poetic and symbolic sense of “Memento Mori” with a concert film which not only captures the three Mexican shows that Depeche Mode held in September 2023. But it fuses the intensity of the live show with the collective voice of a people who celebrate mortality without fear, transforming each frame into a visual ritual of music, memory and rebirth. At a certain point, the concert film “Depeche Mode: M”, in Italian cinemas from October 28th to 30thhe even stops to investigate and explain how death has become a national symbol in Mexico. “It’s a very strange and curious thing about Mexico,” the actor’s narrator says halfway through the film Daniel Giménez Cacho: “Because many of what are considered typically Mexican characteristics are actually not. Starting with Día de Muertos. And in that sense, I think it should be compared to something like – if you want to call it that – the nationalization of sex in Brazil. I mean, in Brazil they nationalized Carnival, in Mexico we nationalized Día de Muertos. And yet, neither of them are a national holiday: they are holidays Catholic. And why, in the 20th century, do we see these countries, which are and consider themselves “mestizos”, merging precisely these two elements? Death and sex are similar, because in both cases we talk about bodies that mix, that dissolve, bodies that dissolve for the common good”.

The direction by Fernando Frías plays with the perception and material of the imageas if the film itself oscillated between dream and reality. The beginning is filtered and distant, arriving through dilated sounds, distant voices, images distorted by black and white or by effects that seem to come from old worn films. Then, a focus occurs and with “My cosmos is mine” the band emerges from the darkness. After a brief narrative introduction that introduces Mexican culture, “Depeche Mode: M” transforms into testimony and concert. The camera moves with the same unpredictability as Gahan’s body, imitating his nervous jerks, his tension and his theatrical gestures. The audience’s screams are not attenuated, but integrated into the sound fabric, because they are part of the music, amplifying its breath and remembering that life – even that of a concert – is always a communion.
At the same time, the camera becomes a spectator among the audience, giving the sensation of watching the show through the luminous filigree of the giant screens. In other moments the live shots seem filtered by a television, as in the performance of “Speak to me”, while with the aerial shots one has the perception of witnessing a collective memory that rewinds and renews itself. There are many passages of the concert film where the image is instead clean, giving a more conventional version, but still of great quality.
The songs are often interspersed with stories or reflections on Mexico. Between “Wagging tongue” and “It’s no good”, old cathode ray televisions project faces of fans together with testimonies of passion and faith, as well as the stories of the Mexican duo Malcriada. Then, after “My favorite stranger”, in an almost mystical passage, we see images of a river flowing, a heron hovering in the air, as if to represent the continuity between what is earthly and what survives.

Visual aesthetics becomes poetic language, thanks to the photography of Damian Garciawhich alternates chiaroscuro and sudden saturated flashes. In “Soul with me” the protagonist is the voice of Martin Gore in an acoustic version of the song, and in “Wrong” Gahan seems to invoke the presence of what is no longer, before the dedication of “World in my eyes” to Andy Fletcher, evoked in the photos shown on the stage screens as throughout the “Memento Mori” tour (seen and described in Amsterdam and Milan). When “Enjoy the silence” arrives, the concert reaches its climax perfect balance between contemplation and liberationwhile with his stage presence and charisma Dave Gahan brings everything back to the physical gesture, to collective dance and to the body that returns to exist in its fragility. “Depeche Mode: M” thus arrives to teach to dance on life and death without tragedy.

Every element – ​​Gahan’s deep voice, Gore’s guitar and synthesizers, the total participation of the audience – contributes to a single message: death is part of life, and memory is the purest way to transcend it. “Depeche Mode: M” is a testament to the survival of art, the bond between player and listener, and the possibility of transforming pain into celebration. On December 5th the experience will be completed with the publication of the box set of the concert film, which will also include four unreleased songs (“Survive”, “Life 2.0”, “Give yourself to me” and “In the end”).

The closure comes later over an hour and a half of concert filmentrusted to the closing credits with “Ghosts again” and the unreleased “In the end”. It is an epilogue that summarizes the entire poetics of the film: accepting finiteness, but continuing to create, remember, sing. As in the Epic of Gilgamesh, immortality does not reside in eternal life, but in the works that are left behindin gestures that remain imprinted in the memory of others. It’s this one Depeche Mode’s true legacy: transforming mortality into art, and memory into movement.

Here is the lineup of the concert film “Depeche Mode: M”:

  • “My cosmos is mine”
  • “Speak to me”
  • “Wagging tongue”
  • “It’s no good”
  • “Everything counts”
  • “My favorite stranger”
  • “Sister of night”
  • ”Speak to me”
  • ”Soul with me”
  • ”A pain that I’m used to”
  • “Wrong”
  • ”Stripped”
  • ”World in my eyes”
  • ”Enjoy the silence”
  • ”Condemnation”
  • ”Never let me down again”
  • “Personal Jesus”
  • ”Ghosts again” (in the final credits)
  • “In the end” (in the final credits)
John
John

With an untamed passion and deep, eclectic knowledge of music, John is the soul of RadioWise UK. Having worked in the music industry for over two decades, his vision was to create a platform that embodies the love and respect for music. John is known for his great attention to detail and insatiable thirst for discovering new talents and music genres.