Documentary Review

I watched Rattle and Hum, a documentary about U2's American tour in 1987.

This documentary centers around the members of the band, Bono (vocals), The Edge (guitar), Larry Mullen Jr. (drums), and Adam Clayton (bass). It also includes the legendary B.B. King, one of the greatest blues guitarists alive today. It is an obserbvational documentary because the filmmaker has no prescence and is simply filming the band. There is also very little persuasion involved.
Because it is documenting a tour, the film is dominated by concert footage. It begins with a cover of the Beatles song Helter Skelter and continues to include many songs which the band played at stops during the tour as well as a few recorded in studios along the way.
The songs are, of course, punctuated by interviews, some b-roll, and backstage footage of the band interacting. The script very consciously has some faults, most notably when the band is asked a question near the beginning and no one answers. Instead they just look at each other and quietly laugh. This is a device that does not seem very necessary, but it is forgivable as the interviews are not the most important part of the documentary, taking the back seat to other a-roll such as concert footage and also one scene where the band rehearses with a church choir.
The dramatic aspects of the film are very minimal , but they are captured in footage of the band rehearsing a song with B.B. King as well as a few more interspersed scenes in which show the band interacting offstage. As one would expect Bono is a very powerful prescence, being the lead singer, but B.B. King is the one who really dominates these scenes by telling jokes and describing his experience being in music for over four decades.
The documentary is very interesting cinematographically. The lighting of the concerts is captured very beautifully on film with angles that use backlight to outline band members as they play or sing. The lighting is mainly low-key especially during concert scenes. This projects the excitment from the actual concert onto the screen. The film is shot almost entirely in black and white, presumably for artistic reasons, but it means that when it transitions into color briefly the audience is taken by surprise. The first color shot is an empty stage with a bright red background projected on a screen behind the set. This creates a very desert-like feel that is appropriate for this film and certain songs such as "In God's Country" and "Red Hill Mining Town.
There is no narrator, and the sound is almost all diegetic. This means that the documentary is free-standing and is without any explanation, this lets the music and the atmosphere of the concerts speak for itself.


  B.B. King performing "When Love Comes to Town"