Sundance 2024: “The Greatest Night in Pop”, “Eno”

Two documentaries explore the very extremes of popular music through wildly different approaches. Read below for Sundance reviews of The Greatest Night in Pop and Eno:

The Greatest Night in Pop

“We Are the World” popularized the idea of the charity single in the United States, where prominent musicians come together to perform on a song whose proceeds would go to a charitable cause (for “We Are the World,” it was alleviating famine in Ethiopia). The Greatest Night in Pop creates a nostalgic look back at what was a mind-boggling collection of talent. Just the sight of seeing Bob Dylan standing next to Michael Jackson in one of his iconic outfits is enough to do a double take. Once the necessary table setting occurs (it could only take place on one night after the American Music Awards when most of the artists would be in LA), the documentary falls into its groove with a mostly straightforward account of the night, using archival footage from the night interspersed with taking heads from some of the participants, most notably Lionel Richie who not only co-wrote the song with Michael Jackson, but was the logistical mastermind behind everything. Director Bao Nguyen and his team do an excellent job of evoking the tension and the frustration of the intense recording session, often just by judiciously editing and juxtaposing footage. Pop also manages to give some fan service in the form of anecdotes such as when Diana Ross asked Daryl Hall for an autograph and caused a flurry of everyone asking for each other’s autographs. Pop delivers exactly what it promises – an in depth behind-the-scenes look at some of the most popular musicians at the time. However, it may really work best for the people who were old enough to remember the song and were familiar with these artists. Younger viewers who may not have heard of most of these musicians might only get a hint of just how massive this event was in pop culture from this documentary.

Eno

Brian Eno has had a lasting impact on popular music by constantly stretching the definition of what should be part of music. He was an important collaborator for musicians such as David Bowie, Roxy Music, and Devo. Even beyond music, Eno has tirelessly found unique ways to express himself for many decades, such as making art installations featuring TV screens. Such a pioneer of music and experimentation of art deserves a documentary that rivals his creativity, and Eno, directed by Gary Hustwit, really delivers on that promise. Using generative software, Eno takes hundreds of hours of footage and creates a unique experience for each screening of the film, mirroring Eno’s own work in creating music through self-generative technology. The Eno I review will not be the same one that you may watch whenever this may be released in the future. The experience of watching Eno is predictably disjointed, but the film stays remarkably coherent, at least in terms of theme. A clip of Laurie Anderson drawing one of Eno’s famous cards that include directions like “do exactly the opposite of what you would naturally do” may come before a vignette about how Eno created the startup sound for Microsoft Windows 95. 

Despite this novel approach and the wealth of material at its disposal, Eno feels incomplete. Eno is certainly a fascinating figure with literally hundreds of stories all the more interesting the last. In the version I saw, I saw very little of Eno’s personal life or at least a serious, insightful discussion of what drives him. Eno is more concerned about showing us a fraction of the many considerable accomplishments its central figure has done in his life rather than providing some cohesive insight into his art that doesn’t come from Eno himself. This approach to Eno’s life and work appears fragmented rather than heuristic, which it so clearly wants to be. Eno is still worth seeing because it provides a glimpse into the future of how technology could change the nature of film viewing itself. But among the several quintillion versions of this film that could theoretically exist, one hopes there is a version that doesn’t feel like it values providing its viewer with a unique viewing experience in substitute of something more profound or substantial.