Credit director D.A. Pennebaker with the insight to realize two hours of concert footage is a bit much for any band, but especially for Depeche Mode, whose viva electronics! approach to music becomes maddeningly redundant after five or six songs.
So, instead, Pennebaker made a movie about the backstage and business dimension of the band's 1988 tour. Concert clips are spliced judiciously between mercifully short interviews with band members, and much of the early concert footage is overlaid with the stage crew chatter as they struggle to balance the sound and choreograph the lighting.There's even a few shots of the "businessmen" counting the loot at the end of a sold-out show - a cool $1.3 million - while Depeche Mode's David Gahan can be heard in the background singing "The grabbing hands grab all they can."
It's not surprising that money matters to Depeche Mode, but honesty is somewhat refreshing.
But there is another prominent theme in the film, which, although equally innovative, falls somewhat flat. At the beginning of the film, promoters recruit about ten New York kids, the winners of a "be-in-a-Depeche-Mode-movie" contest. Then, throughout the show, the camera follows these kids as they tail the band across the country in a tour bus.
In fact, the movie is as much about these nameless kids as it is about the band, which might not be a bad idea, except that these youths, though articulate and seemingly intelligent, just aren't terribly interesting. They dance. They critique art vs. fashion. They get roaring drunk and greatly hung over. And when they finally catch up with Depeche Mode for the 101st concert of the band's 1988 tour at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., the kids dutifully report it was the highlight of their concert-going careers.
What may be especially frustrating to Depeche Mode fans (and they are legion; I heard from several after I reviewed the band's Salt Lake show) is that you learn a lot more about these kids than you do about the band itself.
By the end of the movie, despite several interviews with band members and shots of them backstage,they're still basically the same one-dimensional action figures seen atop that distant stage-top horizon. We just don't know who they are.
And that's a problem when the band members show some indication of living outside the pop-star stereotype. In one especially striking scene, vocalist Gahan, whose flamboyant on-stage persona is decidedly - shall we say, gender free? - is shown backstage in the most domestic of poses: feeding an infant, presumably his own, with a woman, presumably his wife, sitting at his side. Neither the woman nor the baby are introduced, and neither are seen anywhere else in the film.
As for the concert footage itself, there's much to please Modites and Modettes. The film features live versions of such hallowed DP classics as "Everything Counts," "Black Celebration," "Blasphemous Rumours" and "People Are People."
Musically, I still have to lodge a complaint about the incessant use of taped and computerized percussion and synthesizer. At one point, musician Alan Wilder explains how his keyboard has been programmed so that he gets certain sounds when pressing certain keys. When asked if he doesn't sometimes forget which sounds come from which key, he smiles coyly and responds, "Of course."
This isn't music for the masses, but it does have strong melodic content and arrangements that show an appreciation for counterpoint. It's not a movie for everyone either, but it's a must-see for Depeche Mode fans or for anyone curious to learn something about the ever-evolving state of popular music and culture.