Film Review: Bono

Extra.ie​

27-05-2025

Bono talking. That familiar voice opens over a blank screen. 'It is preposterous to think that others might be as interested in your own story as you are.' Is he being disingenuous? Surely Bono knows better than anyone that people are interested in and even fascinated by his story – and that's probably as true of the league in the wings with slings and arrows at the ready as it is for admirers.
U2's last three albums have been all about telling their story, and even the Vegas residency looked into the past, albeit in the most futuristic way imaginable. More specifically, they've been telling Bono's story with songs like 'Cedarwood Road' and 'Iris'. Maybe it was the brush with mortality, coming at an age when looking back is the natural inclination. Maybe it's the lingering aftershocks of the loss of his father. Or maybe it's even a deliberate clearing of the decks before the new album they keep talking up finally arrives. Whatever the reason, we've had Bono's big book, then the audiobook, the backwards glance of the Songs Of Surrender do-overs, and the solo 'book tour' – so now here's the movie of the tour of the book.
The Stories Of Surrender jaunt started in New York's Beacon Theatre in November 2022, made several stops across America and then came to Europe, including Dublin's Olympia Theatre. I offered up my immortal soul for a ticket, but there were no takers. Turned out I was diagnosed with COVID the day of the show. Would I have kept schtum and gone anyway, putting the health of Ireland's glitterati, which had just reminded me I wear the wrong trousers, at risk for the sake of a rock n' roll show? We'll never know. Bono returned to The Beacon for a six-night run (where most of this film was shot) and then finished up at the Teatro San Carlo Napoli in Naples, more of which anon.
Filmed in glorious monochrome by director Andrew Dominik, because as U2 discovered around the time of Rattle & Hum, everything just looks better in black and white, Bono: Stories Of Surrender is populated by the ghosts of both the living and the dead as the man in the shades confronts the past to take him back to his present. He nearly turned fully incorporeal himself back in 2016 and speaks candidly about the heart problem that could have closed up the shop. He's back on the table in Mount Sinai Hospital, having his (war) chest opened up to save his life. He can't breathe. He calls the names of his God, but for the first time, his God isn't there. How did he get here?
Look at that bare table and the chairs that, apart from some fancy, if subtle, lighting, which is still a long way from Vegas, constitute the set. Who does that remind you of? There's a distinct bang of Beckett, with Bono as Krapp listening back to his old tapes, and then there's the influence of the man Friday. Speaking to me for this magazine, Gavin Friday (who is there in the end-credits as the show's creative director and, no matter what they're paying him, a raise should at least be considered) said, 'Give me a bentwood chair, a bulb, a cigarette and a microphone and that's theatre.' Friday employed it in Vicar St last month, and Bono has taken his old friend's maxim to heart, using the sparse furniture to great dramatic effect throughout this theatrical, musical memoir/confession.
'The most extraordinary thing about my life is the people I'm in relationships with,' he tells us, and the chairs fill in for those people who aren't there. There's the ghost of his mother, Iris, scolding him for making a show of himself when that's all he wants to do with his life, who enters and never leaves. Her name wasn't spoken in the house that became an opera after she died, the house where older brother Norman threw the young Bono a lifeline, a guitar, another voice to pray with, which lead to his first proper song, written on his 18th birthday, 'Out Of Control' – and the realisation that he could do this.
There's the rest of U2. The suspicious Larry Mullen, who, when he loves, loves completely. Adam Clayton, a true rock n' roller who had everything even when he couldn't play. And the genius of The Edge, who, apparently, used to go for walks with a young Alison Stewart. Another reason to keep an eye on him.
The best 'band' scene is the creation of 'I Will Follow' where Bono takes the Gibson Explorer off The Edge and starts making sounds. Go on, says Edge, I'm not sure I like it, but go on. Edge takes it back and turns Bono's graffiti into 'Some fuckin' Raphael Mother and Child' while Larry and Adam are burning down the gallery. Playing just a snatch of the original recording is masterfully effective. 'What a complete fucking eejit I was,' Bono admits and calls this his quarter man show because he knows he'd be just another drowning man without the other three.
And there's the other band, The Jacknife Lee Ensemble, who take the music of U2 and reshape it around a never more exposed Bono, whose voice is at just the right soulful and expressive juncture to handle it. While every track hits in a way that Songs Of Surrender only promised to, there are stand-outs. The beautiful harp on 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' ('religious art meets The Clash' and 'a way forward for U2'), and 'Pride', the song that allowed Bob Geldof to forgive Bono for the mullet, as if he can talk, and secured them a Live Aid slot that changed everything, morphs into the soulful prayer that it always really was. It reminds me of John Legend's version, recorded, appropriately enough, for a History Channel celebration of Martin Luther King. It's also worth mentioning that the stately 'rehearsal' version of 'The Showman,' which plays over the end credits, all plucked cello double-bass and finger-snaps, knocks the take on Songs Of Experience into the bin.
There's Paul McGuinness, asking his baby band if their God wants these young men in doubt to renege on legal contracts. And there's Alison Stewart, the girl he asked out the same week he joined U2 and the woman who wrote part of this story, suffered the 'selfishness implicit in the desire to be great at something', saw to him by seeing through him, and knew what he had before he even had his name. There's even a revealing, fourth wall-breaking section where Bono's ego is placed in the chair for examination. Is all this saving the world carry-on just a child-like desire to be at the centre of attention? Well, yeah, probably. Will such an admission silence his critics? No, but it shows an awareness of what drives the Bono Is A Pox crowd demented.
Bono spoke of 'competitive empathy' with Brendan O'Connor on RTÉ over the weekend ('I feel this wound more than you!') and while it's a valid point, his relative silence – until the Novellos – over Gaza and his acceptance of a medal from Joe Biden at the worst possible time did not make for good optics. 'I'm used to this,' he told O'Connor, so in one way it might be water off a duck's back – but here, and remember this was recorded some time ago, he offers another answer to his detractors. He's aware of his hypocritical status, the over-compensated rock star telling others what to do, but in the end, 'What does it matter? Who cares? Motives don't matter. Outcomes matter.' Will this bring the anti-Bono brigade over to his side of the fence? Not a hope, but again, he's got a point.
Floating above it all, however, is the ghost of Bob, Bono's Da, whispering in his ear. Like every son since Cain and Abel, Bono sought his father's approval and understanding, and when he didn't get it, he sang louder, which in the end gave him the life he has, so he owes him thanks for that at least.
Armchairs represent the Sorrento lounge in Finnegan's Pub out in Dalkey, where father and son would meet up, although they'd mostly sit in silence. 'Anything strange or startling?' the father might ask. 'How about Pavarotti calling the house?' Bono offers, thinking that surely a call from the great man would impress this lifelong opera fan. 'Why would he be calling you, did he get a wrong number?' 'Pavarotti wants me to write him a song, now who's the fuckin' eejit?' There's an undercurrent of potential violence in that last line, something every father and son who ever butted heads, i.e. all of them, will understand. 'He is,' replies Bob, defusing the situation.
Bono takes Bob to Modena, and there's a gas encounter with Princess Diana where 800 years of oppression disappear in 8 seconds. Back in Dublin, Bono wonders if the son is starting to make sense to the father. 'I wouldn't go that far,' says Bob. 'But I heard your song 'Pride' on the radio and I may have felt some.' Just when Bono feels his father might be giving up some answers, he gives him the slip by dying, and there's the realisation that comes from imagining this story from his father's perspective. Maybe he was protecting his son all along by telling him not to dream because dreams, in most cases, only lead to disappointment. You realise too late that your father was your friend.
The film ends in the aforementioned Teatro San Carlo Napoli in Naples. The Bay of Sorrento links back around to Finnegan's lounge. Bono's Father had left one of his favourite melodies to haunt his son, 'Torna A Surriento', Come Back To Sorrento, a Neapolitan song sung by everyone from Caruso to Pavarotti. You can hear its melody at the start and at the end when Bono belts it out unaccompanied, the baritone having finally become a tenor, as a hymn to him. You know it even if you think you don't, because Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman adapted it for one of Elvis Presley's best-selling singles back in 1961, before Bono was even a year old. What did they call this song, which connects rock n' roll and opera and The Boy with The Bob, the reason the opera is in him in the first place? Surrender.