Sundance 2024: ENO
The perfect marriage of subject, process, and filmmaker.
“Through a fault of our designing we are lost among the windings
Of these metal ways
Back to silence back to minus with the purple sky behind us
In these metal ways
Nobody hears us when we're alone in the blue future
No one receiving the radio's splintered waves
In these metal ways
In these metal days…”
— Brian Eno, No One Receiving
ENO
v.1.21
January 18, 2024
Park City, UT
5:00 PM
Brian Eno is one of the greatest artistic and creative minds of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. From his early sonic explorations with Roxy Music, to his incredible quartet of unclassifiable solo rock and roll albums2, to his groundbreaking invention and continued expansion of the genre of ambient music, to his legendary career contributing to and producing songs and albums for artists like David Bowie, Devo, Talking Heads, and U2 (among many more), to his ongoing practice of generative music (which, through a set of filters, takes a single musical idea and repeats it, each repeat also changing it as it expands into infinite possibilities), Brian Eno has created uncharted possibilities for recording and composing music at every turn, creating new sonic realities that continue to forge the future of music, pulling us through time to a new living and evolving present.
Eno’s particular brand of genius lies in his approach to and profound belief in collaboration, an artist who makes working with others the subject of his creativity, able to take artistic engagement in new, unexpected directions by eliminating modes of thinking and listening and embracing the beauty of uncertainty. It comes as no surprise then that documentary film, always alive to the changing realities of a story as it unfolds in front of the camera, might be fertile ground for his unique process and approach.
Prior to making ENO, director Gary Hustwit had already transformed documentary filmmaking through his own process of meeting legendary design subjects on his own unique (and beautiful) terms, using visual exploration in films like HELVETICA, OBJECTIFIED, URBANIZED, and RAM (among other delights) to demonstrate how design has shaped so much of modern living. In making ENO, Hustwit has collaborated with digital artist Brendan Dawes to create a new software system for exhibiting the film, a new tool that incorporates Eno’s famous oblique strategies, marrying them with his practice of generative music to give the movie an ever-shifting shape.
To screen ENO, which is comprised of numerous scenes and sequences, the projection system uses a set of rules devised by the filmmaker to pull only a random subset of available scenes, generating a unique screening each and every time the movie is screened3. In this way, ENO is a form of generative filmmaking, a new way of creating a documentary as a living text, structured in scenes that can be included or excluded at random in the narrative by the system.
Not surprisingly, like any recording4 that has undergone the process of enossifcation, ENO transcends easy analysis as, to fully comprehend the entire project, the film must be seen multiple times. As for my sole viewing— all of the material is so compelling, engaging, moving— randomized, but not random; Purposefully made, moments created and chosen, ideas met and included, unexpected moments embraced, opening doors to new questions and ideas, visual rhymes and narrative juxtapositions that could only arise from taking a set of creative intentions and transforming them into pieces which are then shaped into a unique, unified whole.
Eno’s life and work is on full display, often in archival interviews and performance footage, framed by contemporary conversations that prove just how much delightful perspective Eno has on his own way of working and living. And while there is some backstory on his personal life, it remains a form of background—like his musical explorations, Eno’s point of view on himself is structured around doing creative work5, driven by a near constant self-examination and contemplation of his place in the world— for example, his belief in the responsibility for our stewardship of nature is not only a political belief, but finds its way into his thinking about how musical compositions can be built. On camera, he is not afraid to be self-deprecating while also being alive to the moment of filming, his old notebooks and cassette recordings providing insights into his process, brief embarrassments, and genuine rediscoveries. It is all a fan of Eno and his music could hope for.
And so, unlike many technological advances in filmmaking, ENO’s randomization process is no mere stunt or proof of concept, but a definitive artistic choice that completely reinvents the relationship between documentary subject and director by integrating the subject’s complexity and ideas into not only the filmmaking approach and structure of the film, but the possibilities for exhibition, a creative necessity for demonstrating the thematic and artistic ideas within the film itself.
In this way, ENO is an absolutely ideal pairing of filmmaker and subject, a film about Brian Eno that not only does justice to his expansive and ongoing creative output, but which uses that work as a platform for its own purpose and process— the integration of Eno’s collaborative gifts, his warmth and generosity, his musical personality and creative ideals, directly into the experience of making, structuring, exhibiting, and viewing the film itself. ENO is designed to not only endure randomization, but to deliver multiple, unique experiences of transcendent joy because of it— another profound set of choices come alive, a source of endless fascination and exploration that will stand alongside Eno’s albums as a critical pillar of his catalogue, a body of work to which I will return for as long as I live.
I can not wait to watch it again. And then again. And then again.
This piece is a response to screening 1.2 of ENO, the second screening of the film at Sundance, held for the Press & Industry attendees at the festival. The screening I saw began with this version number, and I include it here to signify which of the many possible screenings of the film I saw.
Here Come The Warm Jets (1974), Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy (1974), Another Green World (1975), Before And After Science (1977)- all four masterpieces, the first three released in an unparalleled 20 month span.
As an example, my screening only included a few photos and no music from frequent Eno collaborator Robert Fripp, another incredible musical mind, which, I would have loved to see footage of them paying together and hear Eno talk about their collaboration. Maybe next time? Or the time after that? I look forward to finding out what the film might contain.
In the version of the film I saw, Eno was interviewed and acknowledged his displeasure with the creative time lost by touring, which is why his career has been so uniquely focused on recording music and not performing it. Readers, if you love Eno’s four solo rock albums as much as I do and wonder what it is like to hear them in a live setting, I have to direct you to the incredible Larry Heinemann and his brilliant project Music For Enophiles, who have been, for me, among the most inspirational live music projects I have ever seen. If you live in the New York City area, Music For Enophiles are performing this coming Thursday, January 25, 2024 at The Bowery Electric in Manhattan. Here is a taste of their brilliance. I hope to see you there!
Yet another reason why Hustwit is a perfect choice to make this film.