Director: Beyoncé Knowles-Carter
Eighth months in rehearsal for a two-night set, Beyoncé’s Homecoming Coachella performance of 2018 was a feat of representation, music and dance, captured in one of the greatest concert films ever made, documenting not just the show but the pop star’s battle back to peak physical fitness having recently given birth to twins via emergency C-section. Besting that achievement seemed like a foolhardy ask. Five years later and the Renaissance World Tour was a longer (in all senses) phenomenon. Ever the visual artist, it was inevitable even before Taylor dropped her Eras film that Renaissance would be documented.
I was at the Cardiff leg of Renaissance. If Coachella had been very specifically a celebration of Black talent, Beyoncé’s house infused latest album extended this invitation out to all. The show particularly took time out to represent for LGBTQ+ members of her Hive. Even if Beyoncé’s lyrics have never fully dived into the range and politics of sexuality, she’s been an icon and diva for a community that has embraced and followed her. The atmosphere in that arena was one of elation and safety. Still, as a regular frequenter of smaller gig venues, the sheer scale lacked intimacy; an inevitably trade-off.
Renaissance – A Film by Beyoncé allows a closer look at an often overwhelming live show, expanding ideas found in Homecoming… for better and for worse.
The seamless, sometimes maverick editing between those two colour-coded nights at Coachella remains incredible. For Renaissance, Beyoncé documents the journey and evolution of the tour by turning the film into a kind of fashion flick-book, collaging multiple nights, venues, arenas, and showcasing the sheer variety of costume work involved. Cutting, adding, elaborating, Renaissance truly wasn’t the same show twice. This film, then, allows even those who were there a peek at some of the wild variations, the guest stars on certain legs of the tour, the songs they might have missed.
The other significant expansion on Homecoming is in the interlude sections where we get a better understanding of the process. Rehearsal. Context. Inspirations. Homecoming kept these relatively brief (as long as a costume change). They enhanced the show without causing too seismic a break. The same cannot be said for Renaissance.
These behind the scenes excursions take in conception, physical construction, as well as several backstories for contributors and collaborators and a whole chapter on Blue Ivy’s tentative involvement. They also feature multiple interview segments as well as plenty of Beyoncé obliquely referencing her own trials and tribulations. Of the film’s overall 170 minute running time (already pretty hefty), I would estimate these intermissions take up an hour or more. While each is interesting in isolation, they hobble the whole and might’ve worked more powerfully as a separate documentary. The knock-on effect on the ‘concert’ part of the film is almost devastating.
As a collaged live show document, Renaissance is stop-start and frustrating. Perhaps wisely it cuts down on the balladeering opening of the set, reducing this portion to just two examples for those restless for the party to start, but once the interruptions start regularly carving 15 minute pauses into the set, the communal atmosphere generated by the show is destroyed. The film stresses the audience bond over and over, with a significant amount of time given over to reaction shots, people dancing, people proud of their fits, etc. But this sense of communion is lost in the edit. More songs are cut and, most hurtfully, the narrative of the show is scattered. A sense of continuity and energy gets built up whenever song sequences are allowed to unfurl, but then it is lost again in harsh edits to backstage (“POWER” is cut-off mid-flow).
Thanks to this – and the indulgence of the segues – its possible to start resenting Beyoncé’s bounty of bonus footage, especially as the pace and singularity of the live show is left in ruins. What felt like a party that never ends in person comes to feel like the tour as a whole; large, ungainly, exhausting. Ultimately Renaissance cleaves closer to 2013 puff-piece Life is But a Dream than it does Homecoming.
Eras may have hurt or reconfigured expectations for Renaissance. This is not an invitation to a party that you missed (or hasn’t reached you yet); this is someone talking, at length, about how good that party was. And some of that absolutely hits. “Break My Soul”, “Virgo’s Groove”, “Run the World (Girls)”, “Savage” with a guest spot from Megan Thee Stallion. All of these and more are transmitted to us as incendiary moments. But the whole falters, sags, loses momentum time and again. As an essay on inclusion its heart swells, the representation is felt, tears are shed. But by never letting us forget the machinery of the tour, the film itself feels like just another extension of that machine.
The Lost Highway Hotel 