Bono has been a ubiquitous presence for most of my adult life. I was just coming up in the world 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 contemporary.
We’re both 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 first immersive video feature-length film ever released on Vision Pro. It’s a joyous, funny, sad, sometimes frustrating, and often intense guided tour back through Bono’s life and career.
Mostly, though, it’s a story of Bono (Paul Hewson) and “Da” his deeply Irish dad, Bob Hewson.
Apple provided me with a preview of the film, which I viewed almost entirely through Apple’s $3,499 mixed-reality headset. There were, because of the way Apple insisted I access the video, some tech glitches (occasional freezing), but it was generally an immersive and often moving experience.
Shot almost entirely in stark black and white, the film is both 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 as the singer tells particularly Irish tales about, for instance, his mother dying suddenly when he was just 14, and his father never speaking his wife’s name again.
The stage is spare, featuring little more than a few chairs, a table, and a fake pint of Guinness. But Dominik uses the Vision Pro’s native 3D immersive capabilities to embellish the stage and imagery.
Using 3D line drawing, Bono is, even as he performs or talks in front of a live audience, surrounded at points by lyrics, hand-drawn audience members, or boxes and papers that seem to reach to the sky above you.
This is 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. 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.
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There’s a decent 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 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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