Bono has been a ubiquitous presence for many of my grownup lifestyles. I used to be simply bobbing up on this planet when U2’s break-out album, War, arrived, and through 1987’s Joshua Tree, Bono and lead guitarist Edge felt inescapable. In different phrases, I noticed U2 frontman Bono as much less of an enigma and extra of a modern.
We’re each old-ish males now, licking our psychic wounds and (in Bono’s case) enigmatically revealing them to the arena in, first, 2022’s well-received memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, and now as an bizarre spoken and musical adventure, Bono: Stories of Surrender – the primary immersive video feature-length movie ever launched on Vision Pro. It’s a joyous, humorous, unhappy, every now and then irritating, and regularly intense guided excursion again thru Bono’s lifestyles and profession.
Mostly, even though, it is a tale of Bono (Paul Hewson) and “Da” his deeply Irish dad, Bob Hewson.
Apple supplied me with a preview of the movie, which I seen virtually completely thru Apple’s $3,499 mixed-reality headset. There have been, on account of the way in which Apple insisted I get admission to the video, some tech system faults (occasional freezing), however it was once normally an immersive and regularly shifting revel in.
Shot virtually completely in stark black and white, the movie is each a one-man oratory and an occasional musical efficiency. Director Andrew Dominik makes use of the Vision Pro’s expansive, virtually 360-degree canvas to actually paint scenes round Bono because the singer tells specifically Irish stories about, as an example, his mom loss of life abruptly when he was once simply 14, and his father by no means talking his spouse’s identify once more.
The degree is spare, that includes little various chairs, a desk, and a pretend pint of Guinness. But Dominik makes use of the Vision Pro’s local 3-d immersive features to brighten the degree and imagery.
Using 3-d line drawing, Bono is, whilst he plays or talks in entrance of a are living target audience, surrounded at issues through lyrics, hand-drawn target audience contributors, or containers and papers that appear to succeed in to the sky above you.
This isn’t a live performance or a U2 efficiency. Early on, Bono admits that it is “almost transgressive,’ to be on stage without his bandmates. Instead, Bono is backed by the Jacknife Lee ensemble, which features an electronic drum kit and a harpsichordist/backup singer. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it works.
In fact, Bono, now 65, is in fine voice, which is clear, loud, and agile. This becomes less surprising when you learn that his father was a gifted tenor. Late in the film, Bono does some of his own operatic singing, clearly an homage to his late father.
There are some musical performances and even a few moments in the Vision Pro experience where you feel as if you’re nose-to-nose with the iconic lead singer (it’s unnerving), but most of the singing is done in support of the stories, or rather, the stories explain the origins of songs like Pride, With or Without You, and Sunday, Bloody Sunday.
There’s a good quantity of humor, particularly a tale about Luciano Pavarotti, but more importantly, you do get the origin story of Bono’s musical interests and the formation of the band, which coincided with meeting his wife of more than 40 years, Ali Hewson.
The documentary does start off a little slowly and perhaps melodramatically, with Bono’s 2016 heart surgery, and while I am deeply grateful Bono survived, I worried that the whole roughly 90-minute doc might be a bit of a slog. Fortunately, that harrowing tale was just the preamble, and soon, Bono was weaving an entertaining tale of hubris, struggles, and epiphanies.
It was, though, frustrating to hear the story behind I Will Follow and not get a full performance of the song. I’ll admit that I wanted more of U2’s discography, though Bono’s fresh interpretations, like the almost a cappella Sunday, Bloody Sunday, were stunning.
In the end, this Bono: Stories of Surrender goes too fast, and it ends just as you feel you were finally getting to know the real Bono, a short singer with big tales and, I think, an even bigger heart. He’s still not an enigma, but for the first time in 40 years, I feel as if I might just want to hang out with him.
As for the Vision Pro, it did a brilliant job. 90 minutes is a long time to wear the mixed reality headset (it was down to 10% battery by the end), so make sure you have a comfortable fit. Mine is good (I use the dual-loop band), though I did take a few breaks.
You can watch Bono: Stories of Surrender starting today on either the Vision Pro (for the special immersive experience) or on Apple TV+, where I suspect you’ll enjoy it just as much.
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