Introduction to Bono: A Musical Icon
Bono has been a ubiquitous presence for many of my adult life. I used to be just coming up on this planet when U2’s break-out album, War, arrived, and by 1987’s Joshua Tree, Bono and lead guitarist Edge felt inescapable. In other words, I saw U2 frontman Bono as less of an enigma and more of a recent.
A New Perspective on Bono’s Life
We’re each old-ish men now, licking our psychic wounds and (in Bono’s case) enigmatically revealing them to the world in, first, 2022’s well-received memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, and now as an unusual spoken and musical journey, Bono: Stories of Surrender – the primary immersive video feature-length film ever released on Vision Pro. It’s a joyous, funny, sad, sometimes frustrating, and infrequently intense guided tour back through Bono’s life and profession. Mostly, though, it is a story of Bono (Paul Hewson) and "Da" his deeply Irish dad, Bob Hewson.
The Film Experience
Apple provided me with a preview of the film, which I viewed almost entirely through Apple’s $3,499 mixed-reality headset. There were, due to the way in which Apple insisted I access the video, some tech glitches (occasional freezing), however it was generally an immersive and infrequently moving experience. Shot almost entirely in stark black and white, the film is each a one-man oratory and an occasional musical performance. Director Andrew Dominik uses the Vision Pro’s expansive, almost 360-degree canvas to literally paint scenes around Bono because the singer tells particularly Irish tales about, as an illustration, his mother dying suddenly when he was just 14, and his father never speaking his wife’s name again.
The Stage and Music
The stage is spare, featuring little greater than just a few chairs, a table, and a fake pint of Guinness. But Dominik uses the Vision Pro’s native 3D immersive capabilities to brighten the stage and imagery. Using 3D line drawing, Bono is, whilst he performs or talks in front of a live audience, surrounded at points by lyrics, hand-drawn audience members, or boxes and papers that appear to succeed in to the sky above you. This is just not a concert or a U2 performance. Early on, Bono admits that it’s "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.
Bono’s Voice and Performances
Bono, now 65, is in wonderful voice, which is obvious, loud, and agile. This becomes less surprising once you learn that his father was a gifted tenor. Late within the film, Bono does a few of his own operatic singing, clearly an homage to his late father. There are some musical performances and even just a few moments within the Vision Pro experience where you’re feeling as when you’re nose-to-nose with the long-lasting lead singer (it’s unnerving), but a lot of the singing is finished in support of the stories, or quite, the stories explain the origins of songs like Pride, With or Without You, and Sunday, Bloody Sunday.
The Story Behind the Music
There’s a good amount of humor, especially a story 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 greater than 40 years, Ali Hewson. The documentary does start off a bit of slowly and maybe melodramatically, with Bono’s 2016 heart surgery, and while I’m deeply grateful Bono survived, I nervous that the entire roughly 90-minute doc may be a little bit of a slog. Fortunately, that harrowing tale was just the preamble, and shortly, Bono was weaving an entertaining tale of hubris, struggles, and epiphanies.
Conclusion
In the top, this Bono: Stories of Surrender goes too fast, and it ends just as you’re feeling you were finally attending to know the actual Bono, a brief singer with big tales and, I feel, a good greater heart. He’s still not an enigma, but for the
