I’ve never been particularly taken with concert films: they inevitably pale in comparison to the experience of being at a live venue, and the cinematography usually runs the gamut from queasy oblique shots to cameras zooming in and out while sitting on tripods. Teppei Kishida’s MONO: The Sky Remains The Same As Ever sidesteps the usual cliches for a largely impressionistic and immersive experience into MONO’s European tour and on stage.
Instead of the usual shots of the musicians setting up their gear (or generally static shots of the lead singer, interspersed with shots of the lead guitarist as she or he goes into the solo), Kishida’s fluid camera swoops unobtrusively over the proceedings, lingering over the tangles of wires on scuffed floors, the blur of the hi-hat, the top of the guitarists’ heads as they hunch over their guitars. (MONO is an instrumental band, which naturally diffuses any focus on any single member of the band.) Perhaps most interesting (at least from a cinematic point of view) is the way the director pointedly includes the audience in the film during the performances: people drumming on the monitors, a couple swaying with their eyes closed — an acknowledgment, perhaps, that they matter just as much as the music itself.
But this is all at the expense of any kind of insight into the Japanese post-rock quartet’s impenetrable (or completely opaque, depending on your views) music: we vaguely hear interviewers asking questions on a voiceover track, but they aren’t exactly answered. There’s an inconsequential piece of footage with Steve Albini at the mixing desk, and another short scene while they rehearse with a string section, but there’s nothing else about the creation of the music. The hyperbole on the MONO website doesn’t exactly deliver, and maybe that’s a good thing. The suitably moody, beautifully shot scenes of wintry landscapes, the sun’s glare through leaves, freeways through rain-spangled windshields perhaps illustrate the emotional pull of their music best.
I realize that the words “for fans only” sounds like I’m panning the film, but it won’t necessarily make a convert of the casual listener; the best way to do that is to take your friend for a drive outside of the city and put “Yearning” on really loud. In the end, the viewer gets what should have been promised in the first place: a solid and fascinatingly filmed visual souvenir of their concerts. Everything is thrillingly here: the ritualistic swaying, Taka’s wall-of-sound freakouts, the 10-minute monolith of pure feedback in the middle of “Lost Snow.”
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