“Stories of Surrender”: Bono and the art of taking off his mask

“The rock and roll depends a lot on the artifice, it depends on the attitude, and I have always been very good in this”, Bono tells Rockol in connection via Zoom from Cannes. It is at the Film Festival to present “Stories of Surrender”, the film in which he tries to do exactly the opposite of what he does with U2: no stage object, no special effect, Only stories and songs, without mask, without artifices.
The film is Directed by Andrew Dominik – who worked with Nick Cave – and arrives on Apple TV+ on May 30theven in an immersive version for Apple Vision.
We saw it in preview, we talked about it with the same Bono via Zoom – the complete interview with Rockol will be published in a few days.
In the meantime, however, there is to tell the Film, which transforms the theatrical tour into a story by images that unites the concert to the theater, work and psychoanalysis in front of an audience. He was shot in part in New York, partly in the final date at the San Carlo Theater in Naples that we had told you two years ago.
“Stories of Surrender” was shown last night in a special event in Cannes: “I slept on that beach, I did all kinds of things in this city and I never felt far from God. Maybe just a couple of times”, jokes Bono – who says he does not feel like an actor at all, and that to shoot this film he learned to stop acting.

The showman deconstructs his image

Bono in the film tells his story and the human relationships that formed him: the complex relationship with his father, his wife Ali who met the same week in which U2 were born. At the heart of this solo project there is the will of Bono to deconstruct his image, to get out of the stereotype of rock starr-man, to show his wounds and insecurities.
But this time too he did things big. “Surrenter”, the autobiography released three years ago, first became an audiobook with sound design and songs, which then merged into an acoustic album of U2. Then again a book tour, which became a solo show – the first of his career – who shot America and Europe. Which has become this film, which in turn becomes a new version of the book – which comes out only in Anglo -Saxon countries, and more faithful to the history “only stage”. But Book, show and films all begin with the same scene: Bono on an operating table, with the heart risks giving in, with the air that is missing and the faith that falters.

Andrew Dominik, who comes from the raw and essential films of Nick Cave that elaborates the mourning of his son’s death, transforms Bono’s theatrical tour into A hybrid story, in which theatrical story and musical performances merge, resumed with a black and white black and white, as hard is Bono’s self -analysis. On the past show, monologues are grafted that break the fourth wall, with Bono who addresses his spectators directly, making them enter his mind. “As we filmed, Andrew Dominik, the director, always said to me: ‘Stopping it. You’re reciting. You stop acting’. He pushed me to a truthful performance, for example when I tell the death of my father,” Bono tells Rockol.

Songs as fragments of a confession

Who expects a classic Concert-Film will be displaced: Live music is and is remarkable, but it is at the service of the story. There is no audience of the buildings and stadiums in which U2 move. Instead, there is a man – not just a rock star – who has decided to tell himself, between words, images and songs that become confession, almost a session of psychoanalysis in which he tells the relationship with his father, with his wife, with the other members of the band.

“Stories of Surrender” is above all this: a confession. Of a man who has passed his life to build a mythology – that of the U2, that of the global activist, that of the performer – and who now tries to disassemble it, piece by piece, to see what remains below.
Staying in the music field, the songs are often not performed in full. But the work is remarkable: U2 classics rearranged by Jacknife Lee (producer of Rem and Snow Patrol), with the cello of Kate Ellis and Gemma Doherty’s harp instead of electric guitar. Songs like “With or Withut You”, “Where the Streets Have No Name”, “Desire” are deconstructed as the image of Bono. The effect, in some moments, is hypnotic. In others, alienating: the border is thin, and “Stories of Surrender” travels it intelligently.
Three of these songs will be released in a digital EP on May 30th: “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “Desire” and “The Showman”, which closes the film and that you can already listen to now

New York, Naples and a film ending

The bulk of the film was shot at the Beacon Theater in New York, during the American Tour ResidenceCy, with a standing audience. But There are significant inserts shot at the San Carlo Theater in Naples, in the final date of the tour: The oldest work theater in the world, a place that gives a unique atmosphere to history, in particular to the ending: Bono who sings “returns to Surriento”. AND The final redemption, Bono who pays homage to his father, finally with that tenor voice that his father, in turn singer, had always reproached him for not having. This is the moment when the film, from black and white, goes to color, framing the San Carlo audience. Then the camera brings the viewer to the roof of the theater with a view of Naples and the Navy of Sorrento. On the credits, Bono sings “The Showman” in the empty theater. Returning to wear that mask that has taken off for an hour and a half.

“Surrenter” is the key word

“Surrenter” is not just a keyword of several Bono songs, starting with “Bad”, one of the most beautiful of the U2. It is not the title of the book, the tour and time of the film. It’s the key word: non means only yield, but abandonment, acceptance, letting go. Bono uses it to tell all that he had to give up – control, rhetoric, distance – to get to speak firsthand. And he does it with a lucidity that, at least at times, disarmed.
So, in the end, “Stories of Surrender” does it work? Yes, if you accept the game through which Autoanalysis and entertainment merge. It is a narration built, of course, but sincere in its construction. As the best Bono: theatrical and histrionic, but intense and engaging.
“I entitled all this ‘surrender’ not because I understood what this word meant,” he says, “or why I knew how to put it into practice, but because I knew I had to deal with this theme”, concludes Bono

The relationship with the other U2, Springsteen as a source of inspiration, the rock ‘n’ Roll as a church and the absurdity of fame: the complete interview with Rockol in Bono will be published in the week of release of Stories of Surrender, which arrives on May 30 on Appletv+