Stop Making Sense may just be one of the most perfect films ever made, in the simplest sense of the word aswell. Without any grand artistic opinions the film does almost undeniably serve its purpose to the absolute fullest one could imagine. In its musical sense, the songs are sublime, lifted from various sources across the career of Talking Heads and their multiple off-shoots as of the time of filming in 1983. In the filmic sense, Jonathan Demme brings to the screen every inch of the dynamism and vitality of a live performance through the use of specific and taut film language, aswell as an overall atmosphere of joy propelling is through the whole thing. But what perhaps makes Stop Making Sense so ideal and so perfect, and as I posited “still the best concert movie of all time”, is the ultimate blending of ‘concert’ and ‘movie’ – Stop Making Sense blends these two wholly different mediums together in such a seamless blend that one can  only sit back in awe. As re-watchable and intriguing now 36 years after its initial release as it ever was... as it ever was... as it ever was. Let’s try and make some sense out of this every-elliptical, liminal, transcendent and ultimately very beautiful piece of film.

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“God help us. Help us lose our minds”.

Let’s get into the stats and foundation of making the film before discussing its power and effect on its audience.  Talking Heads were at a pinnacle of their own career when this tour came around, promoting their new album Speaking in Tongues (featuring some of the biggest hits; Burning Down the House and This Must Be the Place [Naive Melody]). It was shot over four nights at their residency at the Pantages theater in Hollywood. Byrne was greatly enticed by Jonathan Demme’s previous films (Melvin and Howard, with The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia still years away). I can see why the choice was made with Demme’s acute and idiosyncratic natures being seemingly perfect for the band and their first film. For the series of concerts Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth (the founding members of Talking Heads) expanded the band to 9 members to give the best sound and performance experience possible. In my humble opinion they achieved it. Byrne is credited as conceiving the show for the stage and perhaps his most famous decision was to have the show build, giving it a holistic and natural place to go to. Byrne first comes out, in a tremendous sheet-white suit with a tape player, before performing a fabulous acoustic rendition of Psycho Killer accompanied solely by a repeating drum beat. A beat hypnotic and constantly pulsating, the rhythm of the beat plays solitary over the entire credits emulating the message of the concerts final song with the beat continuing forevermore. Tina Weymouth, the bands stellar bassist now joins Byrne for a soulful, beautiful and haunting rendition of Heaven. Before Frantz is brought on to kick the beat up a little with Thank You For Sending Me An Angel. In many ways, aswell as building the performance, it shows the evolution of the band. Jerry Harrison (keyboard), Steve Scales (percussion), Lynn Mabry and Edna Holt (backing vocals and dance), Alex Weir (guitar) and Bernie Worrell (keyboards) all come on one by one until we have our complete ensemble for the bands most recent hit Burning Down the House. The release of this final collation of people is so thrilling that one wonders where can the concert go from here, but Byrne’s ingenious use of props, choreography and projection, and Demme’s vital capturing of it, only propels us further and further through a show that couldn’t be further from anti-climatic.

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So what makes it so appealing? What it makes it so critically revered also, with Leonard Maltin commenting that it’s “one of the greatest rock movies ever made”, Robert Christagu heralding it as “the finest concert film” and the ever-critical Pauline Kael describing it as “close to perfection”. For me the answer lies in the divine fusion of two geniuses at the top of their game; Byrne and Demme. The stage conceiving of David Byrne as filmed by Demme and Cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth give new life to multiple mediums. Byrne has made a piece that is simultaneously intellectually demanding and purely sensory and Demme has made a piece that too rides the line of making his camera felt and making it invisible. It all leads to the finest feeling of us really being there, the final goal of any film of this sort. But for as much as this film is a document of one show, it is more so a fluid weaving of four; costumes change (not that costume change), hairstyles change, amounts of sweat alter. We are in a triumphant liminal space flitting from performance to performance with no acknowledgment to the fact, a clear intentional choice by Demme whose greatest choice perhaps in making the film was to strip the fat that had such plagued others. Let me comment that there is a place for all the fat I am about to mention (as I’ll note each time in parenthesis), just not here, not with this film. There is no talking heads footage for instance with Talking Heads (save your groans), no forced  testimonials between songs backstage or prior to performance (Bob Dylan: Don’t look back by D.A Pennebaker is a fine example of this when we are granted an intriguing behind the scenes glimpse and not wanting to return to the performance). One of Demme’s other chief rules was to have no cutting to audience reactions for he felt it told the audience how to feel, instead the implicit feelings of joy were still felt in the audience, just by their own sensing of it rather than through cheap cut-away’s (David Byrne: American Utopia by Spike Lee is however a fine example of how sparring audience reactions can help build an atmosphere acute to what’s occurring on the stage). All this leaves just the music and the performances of that music which are so dynamic and thrilling that they really don’t need any superfluous items surrounding them. Byrne knows that and Demme certainly knows that and that’s what makes Stop Making Sense the glorious film that it is today.

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Another chief aspect to the film’s success is the lack of footage filmed after the fact. Demme did consider preparing a soundstage mirroring the Pantages theater, to capture some harder shots of the band, such as Scorsese did with his marvellous concert film The Last Waltz. The band however decided against this possibility noting that it would negatively affect the bands performance without an audience to bounce off of. This was also the reason as for why there is minimal lighting on the audience, as it would again intrude on the audience’s frantic energy and led to the band believing their performance was sub-standard. For as much as David Byrne’s performance style is characterised as the bizarre and wide-eyed figure of oddity, he is also a remarkably warm performer with a boundless energy that leads to an ungodly amount of toe-tapping even when one is watching sat alone at home. Perhaps the less performative, but no less visible joy and charming smile of Chris Frantz presents a more honest reflection of just how much fun the band is having. Everybody else in the band follows in this suit (not the big kind), with every member just clearly enjoying themselves as they perform and collaborate on stage together. This is emulated by Byrne himself in his final introductions to the band segment concluding Take Me to the River, all elements of artifice are removed and all that is left is a man remarkably proud of his fellow band mates.

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I sincerely cannot stand pretentiousness, so what makes the bizarre messages and conceits of Byrne’s staging here critic-proof? We are looking at projections of disparate and seemingly random words and images that don’t have any direct meaning to the songs being performed, which in turn have within themselves certain lyrics that almost defy definition or theory. The Talking Heads era and music that we find in the film is best parodied in the wonderful comedy series Documentary Now, the brainchild of Seth Meyers, Fred Armissen and Bill Hader, all avid lovers of the documentary form who make a parody of a certain documentary each week. These parodies are so exact and carefully crafted that it falls immediately into the old adage of “imitation being the highest form of flattery”, with Armissen being a self-proclaimed avid fan of Byrne and the film. The music is all on note, perfecting the style and experimentation within the lyricism that personified this era for the band. Every element visually is also remade flawlessly, but for me the chief element that makes this parody so effective and what makes Talking Heads not pretentious in the slightest is an overwhelming sense of earnestness and humble intelligence. Byrne’s sparring comments are artistic and yes often nonsensical, but they do all serve a purpose, even if that purpose is just to awaken within oneself an urge of interest. Byrne famously deconstructed his own persona within a promotional piece of material for the film in which he interviewed himself as multiple different characters. In his most famous answer he described why he wore his big suit, exemplifying why there is every reason in the world to question if there is any meaning and indeed sense in what they’re doing, but also every reason to just sit back and come up with your own understanding of what is being presented to you.  If anything the answer could serve as a mission statement for Byrne’s entire performance career.

“I wanted my head to appear smaller and the easiest way to do that was to make my body bigger, because music is very physical and often the body understands it before the head”.

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This is the greatest concert film of all time and if you were to categorize them as such, one of the best documentaries of all time, and frankly pedantics removed – this is one of the greatest films ever made, no matter the genre, no matter the medium of the thing. Jonathan Demme immortalises this legendary selection of songs and adds much cinematic flare to the proceedings and editing, along with David Byrne’s decisions in staging and performance that lead this to be simply one of the best films of its kind. I hopefully feel as though over the course of this article I have illuminated my reasoning’s for heralding it as such. But perhaps there is no sense to made out of something so visceral and pure, perhaps it is a wholly fruitless endeavour to categorise this as any brand of film. After all this is ultimately above anything else, one of the most pure cinematic shots of adrenaline that any one person can fathom. A shot of pure music. Pure cinema. Pure delight. Thank you Mr Byrne, Mr Demme and the rest of the incomparable Talking Heads.

-          - Thomas Carruthers