The story of four brothers … over a very long period of time …

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My one complaint with U2 … for a very long time … was thelack of what they've done here in this film. Something close and personal.Something intimate and revealing – outside of a song. Something that explains,from them, what the hell we've all been engaged in, headlong, for so damn long.
There are a group of people on this planet that wheneverthey hear the word U2, they cringe. It's hard to get around or dismiss thesepeople and for someone like me who is a serious fan, it's hard to understand whyand difficult to grasp how all that happened. If you watch this documentary …and pay close attention … all becomes clear.
The film opens with a narration from Bono, interspersed withsnippets from Edge, Larry and Adam as well as moments from everyone else closeto the center of this universe. Brian Eno, Paul McGuinness, Anton Corbijn. Itpicks up – exactly – where the last real documentary footage they remasteredand released left off. Most that read this likely bought the remasteredreleases which included The Unforgettable Fire and had their experience ofmaking that album at Slane Castle in the eighties.
The first revelation: They struggled with putting on bigshows, being consistent and worrying that they didn't have enough material tokeep it going.
Wow. I have a lot of the concert recordings of them throughthe eighties and I never once thought that at all. Your fears are truly yourown, no matter who you are. That's probably revelation number two, but that wasmine, for me, maybe not a universal one.
The conversation steers towards Rattle & Hum and it'ssad to hear all the reflections on it. Honestly. These four lads from Dublin invested everything they had financially to make asmall film about them being on the road and their journey through America. Theconcerts after the Joshua Tree release, for them, "were like a roller coaster,"Edge says. This is the point where the world met up with them and instead of listeningto the music and just hearing the album, which still stands up and is timeless,people became distracted by the commentary in the press, which somehow andunfortunately became louder. They were scoriated in the press for Rattle & Hum and after putting so much into it, it killed them or rather, almost killedthem.
The world, Roger Ebert, Rolling Stone, everyone – saw theeffort and them as Megalomaniacs and it would be something that was heavy,painful and difficult to shake. What's more painful is finding this out after watchingthat musical road movie so many times, so many nights, so many Sunday afternoonsand loving it every time – even if it just played quietly in the background. I had heard that, but I never shared the opinion. I just saw it as a modern day version of Kerouac's On The Road.
There is an odd parallel here with what happened at thispoint with U2 and what happened with Weezer during their Pinkerton release[same time frame]. They both went over the edge with something too personal,something too raw, something too good for mass consumption and the critics justwalked all over it and threw it back in their faces as if none of it mattered.
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For the haters, nothing happened here in this period that hadchanged. Let's be honest. One might say that during the first 5 albums U2slowly embraced more and more of the American spirit and made it theirs. Whenyou ask some people they always say the same thing and it's a variation ofthis:
"I like old U2 before they sold out and changed. When theywere a Rock band they kicked ass, something happened after Joshua Tree. Theirearly albums were all that mattered."
These sentences are like the jigsaw pieces that fall out ofpeople's mouths and unfortunately from a set of people old enough who stillcontrol radio station playlists which is why we're always subjected to the same5 U2 songs on FM every time they get play. It's an ongoing shame. I was in New York in April of2011 and I was stunned at the amount of U2 I heard on the radio and the varietyof the songs that played over the airwaves. I heard 'Love is Blindness' on somestation driving out to Jersey and 'Please' thenext day. For me, it was incredible. I mentioned this dilemma to my friend but he just ignored me because I often go off on tangents about history, U2, or the history of U2 -- in no discernible order.
This film is magic from the beginning to the end and willgive you a viewpoint of U2 no matter what you feel about these guys. There'sabsolutely no politics in this, no soapboxing, nothing of that magnitude. It'san internal struggle and "each man for himself" as Bono says, which isunderlined as a betrayal to the concept of a band. They were on the verge ofbreaking up and getting over the loud ringing critical tone of hate that cameat them from the failure of Rattle & Hum continuously. All of that beganthe birth of The Fly, MacPhisto, the pushing back to save themselves.
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Stopping here. It's odd to write the words: "The failure ofRattle & Hum," Jesus that's absurd. "The failure of Pinkerton." An albumthat Rolling Stone later wrote was one of the great top ten concept albumsever. I'm curious now what they say about Rattle & Hum. The irony and thenext revelation, which isn't the first time one might here it, is:
"You can't listen to the critics."
But possibly, there's some serious untruth in that. In dealing withthe pain of what had happened, they came up with 'One' which thenchanged everything. The album came from that moment and everything after followed.

Haters love to mention the album Pop, but that's only because they haven't listened to it from beginning to end. They should called the damn thing 'Hymnal' because that's honestly what that thing is. It's like Bach's collections of Chorales. Everything points back to God in one manner or another and that's not a crime or a bad thing. Some people could use a little more faith, even if it's just in themselves.
In modern mass-consumed music, everyone gets eaten alive,people implode, check out, blow it, say no more. Rarely do people survive it inthis manner shown here. Often bands ditch members and continue, note Foreigner'sproblems and Lou Gramm. Note Creedence Clearwater Revival who are stillfighting with lawyers to this day. Something has to be said about the intensedesire to show up to work and keep going, keep making music and pushingforward. Nothing is ever perfect, but nothing would've been a bitterer pill toswallow for sure. If you can't find something good, you're probably just notlooking.  
"You have to reject one expression of the band, first, beforeyou get to the next expression – and in between, you have nothing. You have torisk it all." -- Bono