And "David Lynch has teleported himself to another dimension" when he doesnt come on stage at the end is one of the more sublime moments I have ever seen in a concert film.
I dont come to this as a mega fan of the band or a snob; certainly this has some songs I'm not that wild about, like some of their "new album" tracks (though "Girl Panic" is fun), or the slower ballads. But there were more hits and numbers I didn't remember they did like "Notorious" or even the 007 View to Kill song, and it's funny maybe only to me how "Girls on Film" is to them what "10th Avenue Freeze Out" is to Bruce Springstreen live in the encore (as in when they jam out and introduce the band). All yhe same, the band and singer are performing as sonically charged as you could probably ever think to see them, at least this late into their career, and the key thing for me is that David Lynch is absolutely game to experiment with image manipulation and super-imposition.
I almost wondered at times if there were some songs he possinly wasn't even crazy about as others, since he would sometimes seem to lessen the visual effects and inspired fragments of particles and smoke and substances and shards he was over-laying (ie "Ordinary World" is just a little wisp of smoke, like he just turned on a humidifier in the room). But that's the exception; most of this is filled with the kinds of objects and ideas that make up the wonderful dreamscape that comes from that Meditative-packed mind of his, and over one number he has dancing Barbie dolls while in another there's, oh I don't know, repeatedly torpedoing airplanes and nails going into... something!
Point is, this is perhaps a big ask for some of the Duran Duran fans who want to just watch their guys and gals play the hits and classics and some new stuff on stage (sorry, Mark in accounting, your wife may not be thrilled), and if you're a Lynch nut that isn't into the band... oh, what am I saying, you all saw every act on Twin Peaks the Return, so what do I know. Unstaged is a phantasmagorical pop spectacle, soulful, occasionally bland (for my taste), and often overloaded with deliciously bizarre and horrific sights. You do get all the hits you might expect, and you get a director aiming for exactly what pleases him - which may include, oh, a spatula tapping on a grill with hot dogs to keep the beat to "Come Undone." So it goes.
And you know what? After a long day for a working class stiff like me, they played "Planet Earth," albeit with a guy from (reads notes) My Chenical Romance, and that is one of the great underrated (?) Bangers of the 1980s and it had perfectly deranged artwork of a creepy melted-face balloon figure superimposed over a classically-electrically charged suburban Lynch house, and occasionally footage of Earth was sprinkled in there during the song, all of it superimposed over the concert footage. What does it mean? Search me. I'm happy.
