From The Sky Down [DVD] [2011]

As someone who is old enough to have followed the many highs and lows in the career of Irish superband U2, I didn't expect much in the way of new insight from the documentary "From the Sky Down." Assembled by esteemed filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, an Oscar winner for "An Inconvenient Truth," the film is a portrait of the group as they prepare to revisit songs from the classic "Achtung Baby." Just to be clear, while there is a lot of musical material, this is NOT a filmed concert. It is, perhaps, most successful as a peek at the artistic process. With a generous use of archival footage and candid interviews with the band members and their intimates, it is a surprisingly thoughtful look at a legendary group as they reflect on their past successes and public foibles. It is fascinating to contrast the group at various points within their career journey and to see just what drives them to endure. Oftentimes Bono, in particular, has come across to me as somewhat brash and even pretentious--here, he and the others exhibit refreshing candor and relatability. And the film itself is a contemplative meditation on the band's legacy.

"From the Sky Down" stays firmly rooted within the primary quartet of Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullin Jr. They provide the principle interviews and source material (with some of their business partners offering contextual support). The film deals with a bit of history from U2's initial skyrocket success to the inevitable backlash from the ill-conceived "Rattle and Hum" feature to their artistic reemergence with "Achtung Baby." Conceived in Germany as the Berlin Wall was coming down, it is clear that the band feels that this is their seminal work. Indeed, the modern portion of the film centers around the band as they ready for the twentieth anniversary of that album. In fact, they specifically commissioned this film from Guggenheim as a record of the occasion.

Easily, the most fascinating portion of the movie is how it really allows a bird's eye view of the artistic process. In the eighties footage, we see how the band really worked together and how the album itself evolved through time. The creation of the song "One," in particular, is fantastically rendered. Similarly, the modern day portion shows a parallel process at work. Through the course of both practice and recording sessions, the band really worked together to create the best product possible. It's refreshing to see the disparate personalities putting ego aside (and they do have big egos) to make something special. At the end of the day, I think "From The Sky Down" is quite successful in achieving its goals. If you are a U2 fan, this is an invaluable addition to their body of work. Even if you don't know or love them, though, this offers up plenty of insight and introspection about surviving and thriving in the musical landscape.

The Bonus Material includes three songs performed by U2: "So Cruel," "Love Is Blindness" and "The Fly." In addition, Guggenheim, Bono and The Edge field a few questions at the film's premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. KGHarris, 12/11.

"It's an odd place to live your life, as an artist: building from the sky down." - Bono

The film opens with the band about to go onstage at Glastonbury on June 24th, 2010 (My birthday, incidentally.) They opened that show by playing a song from Achtung Baby: Even Better Than The Real Thing.

I remember being a young U2 fanatic when Rattle and Hum came out. I loved the album. I was proud of "my" band. Not having an older brother, or anyone to introduce me to pre-1980 music, it WAS my introduction to B.B. King, to the Blues, to American music. I did not understand that my experience was unusual. I heard God Part II before I'd ever heard Lennon's God. U2's versions of Helter Skelter and All Along the Watchtower were the FIRST versions I'd ever heard of those songs.

I remember watching the Siskel and Ebert review on television as they trashed that film. They said something like, "It wouldn't make them any new fans." I thought they were ridiculous. I didn't understand the reaction which people who were a little older than I was were having, and who knew more about the music of the 1960s and 1970s. And, Rattle and Hum WAS a good movie. I remember playing it for friends in college and converting a few new U2 fans to the fold.

But, as great as Rattle and Hum might have been, it did have a rough reaction from the critics and it's only now in From The Sky Down that we see how much this upset the band. U2 were never in it just for the money, or the fame, or to get laid, or any of the usual reasons. They were and are artists and they wanted to create art which would be respected by their peers and the industry. The critical reaction in 1989 kinda caused a nervous breakdown for them. They had to "go away and dream it all up again." Which meant they had to reinvent the band. They had to drastically change their sound.

Around this time I remember a Prince interview. He was upset that U2 had gotten the Grammy instead of Sign of the Times. He said something to the effect that he could do "folk music" like The Joshua Tree. He pointed to his song, "The Cross." But, U2 could never do anything like "Housequake."

U2 then set about learning how to make music that you could dance to. They got funky, and shockingly, they did it well. Achtung Baby is considered by most to be one of the two best albums they've yet written. (The Joshua Tree is the other.) This film is about the band pausing and taking a moment twenty years later to look back at how they made this drastic transformation and managed to take the same four man line-up and basically form a brand new band.

There is a cut of this movie which is included in the 2011 Super and Uber re-releases of Achtung Baby. However, that cut is shorter. There are some great scenes missing, including one where they talk about the reasons almost all of their peers DID break up, while U2 only managed to stay together because they wrote Achtung Baby.

There aren't a lot of bonus features on the disc, but they're very strong. The solo performance of Love is Blindness by The Edge will blow you away. Bono attempts solo versions of both So Cruel and The Fly which are.... both crap and great.

Which brings me to the interview. They also included an extended interview with the band, which is perhaps more touching than the film itself. At the end, Bono talks a little bit about where the band is today. Almost breaking into tears he shares that he feels the band is in a similar crisis now to the one they were in in 1990. They need to reinvent themselves again. He knows they can continue to sell out arenas and make tonnes of money, but can they get their new songs played on the radio? It reminded me of their performance on Saturday Night Live a couple of years ago. During the performance of Moment of Surrender, he improvises lyrics at the end about not wanting to be left alone in the song. Get on Your Boots had failed as a single - a massive slap in their face. There were plans to release a second album at the end of 2009. They announced that it would be called "Songs of Ascent" and that the lead single would be "Every Breaking Wave." But the failure of No Line on the Horizon to launch a hit single seems to have scared the band back into their shell. The band seems to be reeling now from a critical stumble in the same way they did back in 1989. Why are they opening new shows by playing 20 year old songs? It has to hurt them that the new material doesn't grab the audience now the way a 20 year-old single does.

"These days we're a better band. We've learned our craft and therein lies a huge danger, which is there's a giant chasm between the very good and the great. And U2 right now has a danger of surrendering to the very good. In those times, 20 years ago and indeed before that we were crap AND great. There wasn't much very good. And I think that - I was just reminded of how crap we were watching the film and I just found it really awful. And yet, it was a self-imposed crapness, like we were trying to make music that we didn't understand and the band seems to do its best work when its in that environment and when it gets comfortable it's not as interesting. And so, there may be some more crap coming up." - Bono

I would have liked to give the film 5 stars, but I am going to subtract 1 star because I feel like there is material missing from the Bonus features which belonged there. First of all, their project seems to have been to get together to figure out how to play all the old songs again. Yes, about half of the album is still played every night when U2 is on tour, but songs like So Cruel, Love is Blindness, Acrobat, and Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World were left behind. I feel like they wanted to include new performances of these songs, but chickened out.

Also, I had a bootleg LP record long long ago of U2 writing some songs on the beach in the late 80s. They were working on an acoustic version of "She's Gonna Blow Your House Down" and another one called "We Almost Made it This Time." They actually include VIDEO of that session in the movie - but it's cut and very limited. This would have been the place to give us that video as a bonus feature. It was beautiful and showed the band's creative process in a wonderful way. I worry if that footage will ever be completely released now? The songs aren't on any album.

It's a film which I think even non-U2 fans will enjoy. The band are intelligent and they have a lot to say about the nature of art and being creative partners. There is a plot and a narrative, and I think it speaks as much to where the band is now as it does to where they were 20 years ago. They've come full circle and they find themselves again at a place where they have to be reborn or die. REM died recently and quietly, 12 years or so after they ran out of ideas. U2 is honest and clear enough to admit to us that they are afraid now of falling into that same trap.

As Zimmerman said, "He not busy being born is busy dying."

Any lifelong U2 fan already knows the story behind this--how U2 had maxed out by this time and had a bad taste in their mouth (along with critical backlash) after "Rattle n' Hum." How the band traveled to Berlin hoping that change of scenery would create a spark, which it really didn't except for one song. Turns out that song was enough.

One would believe that this has footage from the Berlin sessions but it really doesn't--it has the band re-telling the story now while showing shots of the Berlin sessions (you'll recognize them from the sleeve of Achtung Baby). In fact, when they finally get to the footage they DO have of the Achtung Baby sessions, that appears to be from when they'd already returned to Ireland. They do have, however, DATs from back then of early attempts on songs like "Mysterious Ways" which was really nothing but a bass line and a drum loop--and a mess--in the part they play.

This is more appropriately called the band giving an oral history of the sessions back then, on-camera.

The big revelation here--SPOILER ALERT STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT A SURPRISE BLOWN--is that "One" was originally intended to be a middle section for what became "Mysterious Ways." So in other words, arguably their most iconic song from that record was a discarded part of another song. Now, that I did NOT know.

There's some funny footage of them demonstrating that for all their stone-faced piety leading up to that period, they knew it was an image that wasn't accurate and even joked about it. There's also some cool footage of them rehearsing (now) and Edge doing a killer acoustic version of the song "Love is Blindness," which I never liked on record but this version is cool.

The movie's beautifully filmed and as I said, for U2 completists--I doubt the casual fan would be much interested in what's being presented here. For those of us who've seen everything, there's still some surprises. They also seem astutely aware of why Rattle n' Hum alienated not just critics but fans and, after seeing this film, one could almost argue that that failure was crucial in them reinventing themselves and changing their sound in such an epic way.

For U2 fans, dare I say it, it almost might be a film too premature at this stage, in that, sure: Achtung was awesome and a rebirth of the band, but it was arguably the last classic album they did. They've had some good ones since then and some just okay ones (by their standards, which I consider higher) but whatever they did 25 years ago as depicted here they sorely need to do again, as they've been pretty much coasting that past two or three years, not even putting out an album.