Why U2's Bono surrendered himself to the screen, one memory, rattle and hum at a time

Globe and Mail

6 days ago

No one rocks rose-coloured glasses like Bono.
Holed up in a Cannes hotel suite overlooking the French Riviera – the bay outside swarming with megayachts, a good portion of which likely belong to the U2 front man's famous friends – the rock star known to some as Paul David Hewson is clad in black, head to toe. Except, that is, for his stylish pair of rosé-all-day sunglasses. Which are, of course, the perfect lens through which to view Bono's relentlessly sunny outlook. A perspective that is on full, glorious, it's-a-beautiful-day display in his new documentary, Bono: Stories of Surrender.
Three days from now, Bono will walk the red carpet as Stories of Surrender makes its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where hundreds of click-happy paparazzi will shout his name while heat-exhausted fans clamour on the sidelines. In other words, a normal evening out for the world's most famous Irishman. But this morning in his hotel, well, Bono is feeling a little out of place, no matter his shade of eyewear.
'I've certainly got some imposter syndrome here, impersonating an actor on the Croisette, walking the plank that is the red carpet,' Bono says, not at all convincingly. 'It was strange making this film, because I thought maybe I wouldn't be very good at acting? I found it quite overwhelming, having to go to all those places.'
Those 'places' are the sometimes anxious, sometimes heartwarming depths of Bono's youth in north Dublin – the home where he lost his mother, fought with his father, met his wife and formed U2 – which he previously chronicled in his 2022 memoir, also titled Bono: Stories of Surrender.
After publishing the autobiography, Bono eschewed a traditional book tour for what he calls his 'quarter-man show' without his U2 bandmates – a sold-out run of performances at New York's Beacon Theatre in which he mixed personal-history monologues with stripped-down renditions of U2 singles. A few years after the show closed, Bono turned to his long-time friend, the Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James, Killing Them Softly, a series of Nick Cave documentaries), to transform the work into yet another medium for Apple TV+, shooting in stark black-and-white.
'Andrew's work with non-actors was the draw. You know Eric Bana was a comedian before he was in Andrew's Chopper, right? He became the Eric Bana he is now with Andrew's guidance,' Bono says. 'It's not just a film of a concert, and it's not just a film of my performance. Andrew was very demanding and wouldn't let me get away with anything. I had to film the scene where I say goodbye to my father five times in one day, and these are very strong feelings I was having. But not strong enough for him: 'It's performative, mate!''
Bono is well-aware that the new film is something of a vanity project – he cops to it right in its opening. But the musician also knows that he didn't get to where he is, headlining world tours and bending Apple to his whims, by shying away from the spotlight.
And the stories Bono shares on screen are far beyond the kind of navel-gazing, self-serving nostalgia trips that might be expected from other stars of his stature. The film opens with a haunting recollection of Bono's eight-hour emergency heart operation from 2016, before rewinding to his teenage battles with his emotionally unavailable, widower father and the lucky break he scored in 1976 when he connected with three high-school mates: Larry Mullen Jr., Adam Clayton and David Howell Evans, better known as the Edge.
If the film seems atypically rooted in exploring the man who is Bono, rather than perpetuating the myth that is U2, that's because it is. And if Bono himself seems more committed to promoting and pushing the doc than any other project in recent memory, well, that's true, too.
The musician rarely sits down for one-on-one interviews these days, and it is unclear how many times he might have previously taken the time to personally autograph copies of his memoir for journalists who didn't even ask for one (although I will forever treasure the 'Thanks Barry!' that he scrawled inside my copy, the 'arry' in my name written over the 'ono' from the book's title page).
This project seems to have ignited something in Bono – a desire to chase the past in order to figure out his future. It is not so much a midlife-crisis project as it might be a figuring-out-what's-next project. He still hasn't found what he's, well, you know.
The timing makes sense. A few days before the Cannes premiere, Bono turned 65. Next year, U2 will celebrate 50 years, a milestone that will be commemorated with a new book, at least one new documentary and a new Netflix drama series written by Anthony McCarten of Bohemian Rhapsody fame. Memory, its power and presence, is simply in Bono's atmosphere.
'Part of writing the book Surrender was to retrieve memories that I lost, and then doing the play I ended up discovering ones that had really changed me, too,' Bono says. 'I began to really appreciate my father, in playing him. Just by turning my head to the left or the right, I discovered him. One side is my younger self. By turning my head, I became my father.'
Despite his assertion that he's no actor – seeming to forget, unlike my children, his performance as a rock-star lion in Sing 2 – Bono proves himself to be a great performer in Stories of Surrender. Whether he is personifying his father, his bandmates or even Luciano Pavarotti, the man has a talent for not only spinning his own narrative but deftly weaving in others'.
'Lots of singers are mimics – it's our musical ears. We all vie to have the best Bob Dylan impersonations, though Mick Jagger's is probably the best,' Bono says with a laugh. 'Making music, you step into the shoes of the people who you most look up to. Even my activism, if I think about it, was probably shaped by John Lennon growing up in my teenage years. Here was a guy who was ready to look ridiculous for peace! I knew I could do the ridiculous part. It was just if I can follow that level of songwriting.'
Stories of Surrender doesn't focus much on the singer's long and sometimes controversial (i.e., white saviour) history of activism – work that brought him, back in 2010, to guest edit an edition of The Globe and Mail about 'the African Century' alongside Bob Geldof. ('At ease,' he says upon learning that he was technically close to being my boss.) But the film's release has caused Bono to re-examine and recontextualize his legacy in that realm, too.
'Being Irish, we definitely approach the injustice of the world's poor from a horizontal position – we're looking across to them, not down,' he says. 'Ireland is a kind of encouragement for people, because if you were the poorest country in Europe, how did you get out of it?'
Unlike so many other stars attending Cannes, who seem to be allergic to the words 'tariff' or 'Trump,' Bono is also eager to talk politics, even when unprompted.
'I'll say one thing: There are 51 reasons to be grateful for Mark Carney,' Bono says with a smile, before going on to rhapsodize about the Canadian Prime Minister's Irish roots. The 52nd reason? His family come from the same county as the Gallagher brothers, Liam and Noel. They're definitely from seeds that grew into very different trees, but I'm grateful for both!'
Sitting alone in the room with Bono – well, 'alone' is a relative term when there are assistants and publicists and camera operators swirling about – one cannot help but recall the stripped-down atmosphere of Stories of Surrender itself. The tiny, bare-bones stage of the Beacon is, after all, a world away from the high-tech, high-everything orb of the Sphere in Las Vegas, where U2 recently wrapped up a residency in which they performed the entirety of 1991's Achtung Baby.
'Part of this was asking, had I just gotten used to a certain maximalism?' Bono says. 'At the Beacon, we were able to get to that level of intimacy because I had all this time with an audience who were just a yard away. There's a little bit of taking your clothes off in front of the whole school about this.'
Not that Stories of Surrender is some bygone, analogue experiment. Apple TV+ subscribers can watch the doc in its traditional form starting May 30, or strap on an Apple Vision Pro headset to get a more immersive, 3-D experience that feels akin to inviting Bono directly into your living room. Although that element gave Bono just a bit of skeptical pause, given that the last time he partnered with Apple on a quote-unquote innovative project, it resulted in U2's album Songs of Innocence showing up unsolicited in iTunes libraries around the world.
'Apple suggested the VR element for this film – they offered us their labs to play: 'We have this technology, do you want to try something?' I think as corporations get to that scale, they start experimenting,' Bono says. 'We know some of those experiments didn't go right – I was in charge of one of them, and it was my suggestion actually. But you're seeing successful experiments.'
One of the charges that critics have tried, sometimes successfully, to stick on Bono is that it is impossible for a star of his magnitude and influence to see outside of his own bubble. But Stories of Surrender seems to be Bono's backward way of bursting that notion.
'I have to be careful about this film, I can only watch it so often – that's the imposter syndrome you're witnessing. I'm not acting. I'm trying to tell my own story, to regain some of the dimension and the pencil shavings that you lose when you become a bit famous,' he says. 'Can I get it back? Can I return some of myself to the band? To my family?'
He slides his glasses back and nods to himself, satisfied with answering his own question. It is Bono's world – he can see it however he wants.
Bono: Stories of Surrender is available to stream on Apple TV+ starting May 30.