U2’s Bono is seen as a successor to a very petite fraternity of world-conquering rock stars – the likes of Springsteen, Jagger and Bowie. He’s less
U2’s Bono is seen as a successor to a very petite fraternity of world-conquering rock stars – the likes of Springsteen, Jagger and Bowie. He’s less recognized as a successor to a literary tradition: the Irish pantheon of Joyce, Yeats, Beckett, Heaney, and O’Brien.
But his impressive gift of language shines in the recent documentary Bono: Stories of Surrender, directed by Andrew Dominik, which just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the Special Screenings section.
“I was born with an eccentric heart,” he notes wryly near the beginning of the film – an iteration of his one-man show at New York’s Beacon Theatre, which in turn grew out of his 2022 memoir, Bono: 40 Songs, One Story. The lovely “eccentric heart” line gestures to an inherited condition that would almost cost him his life: He underwent emergency aortic valve-replacement surgery in 2016. That near-death experience in his mid-50s seems to have triggered a reckoning with his life and relationships, especially with his tardy father, Brendan Robert “Bob” Hewson.
‘Bono: Stories of Surrender’
Apple TV+
The film unfolds in a series of absorbing stories told on a spare stage, interspersed with performances of stripped-down versions of U2 songs. The monologue charms with poetic turns of phrase and poignant recollections: Bono’s mother died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage was he was just 14.
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“The last time I saw my mother alive was at her own father’s funeral,” recounts Bono (né Paul Hewson). “This sounds almost too Irish, I know. My father’s response to this tragedy was to never speak of her again.” Without a mother in mid-adolescence, the teenage Paul would need extra emotional support from his “Da,” as he calls Bob. But it wasn’t forthcoming.
“I craved my father’s attention,” Bono admits. “He didn’t hear me. So I sang louder and louder.”
‘Bono: Stories of Surrender’
Apple TV+
Bob Hewson, we learn, possessed a fine tenor voice himself and loved opera. Later, when Bono and U2 had become world eminent, the rock star informed his Da that Luciano Pavarotti had phoned to ask the band to collaborate on a song. The elder Hewson wondered if perhaps the great Italian tenor had inadvertently called the wrong house.
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That kind of cutting exchange sheds airy on the formation of a personality – the uncommon psyche capable of riveting an arena full of people with his voice and charisma. The demand for attention, as Bono, acknowledges, was that sturdy. It produced a streak of megalomania as freely admits.
The story of Bob and Paul, father and son, is an Oedipal one – ending with Bono’s triumph on a grand scale as he surpasses every conceivable wish his dad could have had for himself as a vocalist. Having achieved that, Bono seems ready to enter a period of magnanimity at this stage of his life, re-evaluating his father and finding him funnier and wiser than he had given him credit for being.
Bono carries his father’s coffin at the funeral for Bob Hewson in 2001
Chris Bacon – PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images
He recounts that as adults, they would go for drinks, and Bob would always start the conversation with the question, “Anything strange or startling?”, inviting his son to surprise him with something worth hearing. One time, Bono tells us, he turned that opening question on his Da, only for his father to respond that indeed something strange and startling was happening – he had been diagnosed with cancer and thus found himself residing in life’s “departure lounge.”
‘Bono: Stories of Surrender’
Apple TV+
Bono speaks a bit in the film about his bandmates, allowing that it feels “transgressive” to perform U2 songs without the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. He discusses his long relationship with his wife Ali, whom he met in his teens, the same week in fact that he met Edge, Clayton and Adams. Mostly, the spoken section of the film plays as an internal monologue as Bono contemplates what it might mean to surrender – to what, it remains somewhat unclear. I suspect it’s about surrendering to vulnerability, to the thought of peeling away the mask of rock stardom to see what sort of person lurks underneath.
Whether he’s successful at letting go of the mask is debatable. His father, it appears to me, was a master of deflection – what is the question “Anything strange or startling” other than a way to put someone on the spot and force them to “perform” an answer? It’s a tactic more than a question. Bono, too, ultimately deflects in his stories which entertain, delight with their original phrasing, but don’t quite feel like a soul-baring confession. Perhaps that’s not really what we want from a rock star anyway. From an artist, actor, former politician, maybe; I’m not sure we’re really pining for a Springsteen or Jagger to “surrender.” I think we’re OK with them continuing to stand on that pedestal of a stage, captivating us without us really understanding how they do it.
Bono explores in the film how he’s becoming his father at least in one respect – as he ages, his singing voice is rising from baritone to tenor. Age 65 now, he sounds fantastic. He describes “shouting” the songs U2 became known for; here, in the reimagined versions, the tone is plaintive and slower, fitting for a show that’s intended to be reflective.
‘Bono: Stories of Surrender’
Apple TV+
Black-and-white visuals give the film a striking look, and the superb sound design and lighting design enhance a feeling of intimacy. Periodically, a panel of lights flash behind Bono rendering him in silhouette. It’s gorgeous on a large screen (though it won’t be welcome, presumably, to anyone with an epileptic condition).
On stage, Bono sometimes sits at a table – meant to conjure the kitchen in the home where he grew up at 10 Cedarwood Road in North Dublin. At other times, he addresses a few chairs placed under spotlights – stand-ins for his bandmates, his father or others. (I couldn’t support thinking of Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair at the Republican National Convention in 2012.)
Director Dominik essentially shot two versions of the film – one in 2D and another for Apple Immersive Video (both versions premiere May 30 on their respective Apple platforms). To paraphrase the U2 song “Vertigo,” does the documentary give you something you can feel? Absolutely. Over the course of 87 minutes, Bono’s spellbinds with stories – not to mention songs – delivered in prose that makes him a worthy successor to Ireland’s exceptional writers.
Title: Bono: Songs of Surrender
Festival: Cannes (Special Screenings)
Distributor: Apple Original Films
Director: Andrew Dominik
Cast: Bono
Running time: 1 hr 27 min
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