ENO dir. Gary Hustwit
By Mads Layton
Visionary musician and artist Brian Eno — known for producing David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, among many others; pioneering the genre of ambient music; and releasing over 40 solo and collaboration albums — reveals his creative processes in this groundbreaking generative documentary: a film that’s different every time it’s shown. (via Sundance)
Mads: I’m really conflicted about this one. The editing/sequencing was done by the use of a custom AI program that was fed both the director Gary Hustwit’s personal notes on film construction, and hundreds of hours of footage of Brian Eno through the years, including interviews done exclusively for the project as well as recording sessions with the likes of U2 and David Bowie. A small team of editors then categorized and edited types of “scenes” for it to work with. From there the program is designed to generate a new movie upon every rewatch, only following a general guideline in terms of the general layout.
Conceptually, I think this generative approach suits Eno’s philosophies on natural occurrence and randomness in his own music, which is clearly why he signed onto the project in the first place. It pushes the idea of what film, and especially documentary film, can be.
In practice, the film has the really bizarre editorial touch of, well, a machine. Music gets cut off abruptly leading from scene to scene, the ebb and flow of the film’s structure feels loosely coherent but still random, and I could’ve sworn the movie was going to end one or two talking-head interviews before it did. According to the director, there was a lot of discussion about how present the AI should be in the film itself—in the final product the screen would occasionally go black between scenes for you to watch it choose in real time which meticulously labeled clip it would show next. The result is a music doc unlike I’ve seen before, with pretty by-the-numbers narrative choices and a bit of a rudimentary splicing style. This can sometimes take away from what shines about it: Eno has always been a passionate and unique presence within the music and visual art spheres, and one can only wonder how much more impactful your experience could’ve been if you had only gone to a different screening.
Despite its shortcomings, the method by which it came together is not altogether off-putting. In fact, I think it’s a really fascinating experiment within the medium of film, and this was an apt subject matter to tinker with. The ephemerality of each viewing only adds to that. However, I don’t see, amidst the standard modes of distribution being either streaming services or physical copies, what the longevity of a project like this could be. I‘m skeptical about whether this could ever be accessible to as large an audience as I think the team, and Eno’s legacy, deserves.