They work on different planets, and they do their superstar thing in very different ways, but the recent Taylor Swift concert film was, you know, fine. Whereas “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” is really good.
Beyoncé’s outrageously lavish five-month 2023 concert tour’s mixture of spectacle, spangle, video immersion and dance party has been captured, deliriously, for fans who caught the show live and those who didn’t.
The movie’s generous footage — a lot of it — of the rehearsal, setup, backstage beehive and fan adoration, crystallized by one tear-stained rapturous close-up after another, reveals only (and precisely) what Beyoncé wants to reveal. She directed it, wrote the narration, produced it, ran the whole shebang. And there’s enough moviemaking going on in the results to activate the experience.
Released by AMC Theatres, which made hay on Swift’s concert movie a few weeks ago, “Renaissance” opened for the public Thursday night. I caught it at a Regal multiplex in IMAX ($33.75 with fees on Fandango) and the crowd, BeyHivers in large, glammed-up part, clapped a ton and interacted fully. Somebody in my audience really didn’t have a good impression of Houston, Texas, where the onetime two-named Beyoncé Knowles grew up. So every mention of the word “Houston” in the movie was met with a “Noooooooo!”
The most Grammy’d musical artist in history (second place: Sir Georg Solti), Beyoncé speaks several times in “Renaissance” about creating a “safe space” for her fans, many of whom look to her music, and to her, for solace, understanding, a melodic and rhythmic comfort zone. The endlessly voguing, perpetually yet serenely transforming star we see in “Renaissance” works like a fiend to realize the fine points. Who could ask for more from a superstar on a series of superstages, one minute evoking Fritz Lang’s robot woman in “Metropolis,” the next, a kinetic, electric Destiny’s Child alum in motion? Beyoncé has that beautiful, rangy voice, those moves, that face, the whole self-described “Black country curvy” wonder of her at her disposal.
As a visual capture of a tour supporting an album, “Renaissance” may not hold a candle to her remarkable, 65-minute visual album “Lemonade” that appeared, more or less out of nowhere, in 2016. But it’s holding an entirely different sort of candle, or rather two candles. One’s a concert movie; the other’s a how-I-made-the-concert-and-this-movie movie.
“Renaissance” was her seventh studio album, and the “Renaissance” concert tour started in Stockholm in May 2023, not long after Beyoncé had knee surgery. “I’m not a machine,” she reminds us. Her work/life balance challenges on tour would clobber anyone. Traveling, albeit not in coach or Ubers, with husband Jay-Z and their three kids; the touring life; the hours it takes Beyoncé to wind down after a performance; the demands every which way are not easy.
Allowing her eager 11-year-old, Blue Ivy, to perform on tour with her, who then gets flamed on social media for it is not easy. The movie devotes a good chunk to Blue Ivy’s resolve to keep rehearsing, try again and get better.
There are lengthy, loving tributes to the Knowles’ family friend Uncle Johnny, who introduced Beyoncé to house music and designed a lot of her early looks. Thanks to her, the late nephew of her mother Tina Knowles has become a queer icon for millions. We hear Beyoncé acknowledge her frustrations, even at her particular summit of stardom, at not getting what she wants out of her colleagues, or business partners, without a struggle. “Communicating as a Black woman, everything is a fight,” she says coolly at one point. The “Renaissance” touring extravaganza we see on screen is proof that the fight was, and is, worth it.
Some (like me) may prefer concert movies (or backstage/onstage performance hybrids) that settle for highlights rather than most of the live show. “Renaissance,” the movie, runs nearly three hours. The pacing feels a little off in the final half-hour. Some detours don’t quite pay off, such as the Destiny’s Child reunion in Houston, given about 20 seconds of screen time and then it’s gone.
On the other hand, “Renaissance” does so much right, including the editing decision to use a dizzying variety of takes, captured in different cities and different costumes, within a single bar or two of a given song. The woman at the center of it all seems to be changing costumes at will, with one shake of whatever’s shaking at the moment. The movie’s commercial fortunes will, I think, bear out the lyric in “Thique,” the one about cash getting thiquer. But if there’s a triple-threat out there who delivers more for your cash, I don’t know why we haven’t heard about her yet.
“Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” — 3 stars (out of 4)
No MPA rating
Running time: 2:48
How to watch: Now in theaters
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @phillipstribune
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