The blessed sunlit moment of Barbenheimer is receding into memory, and we are once again forced to conclude that cinema – real cinema, proper cinema, the collective theatrical experience – is not in great shape. The local independent has managed to secure a lease extension for another two years, and the Phoenix seems healthy enough, but it seems that the lease is up on the Odeon's so-far surviving city centre multiplex and it is due to be converted into flats at some point next year. So from three city centre cinemas we will be down to just the Curzon, with the Ultimate Picture Palace and the Phoenix still within fairly easy walking distance.

It's not exactly surprising, then, that distributors seems to be casting their nets wider than previously in order to find an audience. Currently playing at our local, mainly due to public demand, is the thriller Sound of Freedom, presumably thanks to the wave of conspiracy-theory-adjacent buzz it is riding; conventional cinema's hopes are doubtless pinned on Scorsese's latest, very chunky offering Killers of the Flower Moon; while going up against the Scorsese movie (and very nearly as chunky) is nearly three hours of squealing and bodysuits as Taylor Swift unleashes her concert movie. (You know, I haven't made my mind up for certain about that one; I know very little about Taylor Swift but there's been such a fuss over her recently that I can't help wondering what it's all been about. On the other hand, multiplexes apparently relaxing their rules to allow dancing and selfies during screenings rather puts me off the idea.)

It is quite unusual, certainly, for a concert movie to be such big news; they tend to be slightly niche things, don't they? The fuss about the Taylor Swift film certainly led to a bit of a debate on the topic of concert movies in the office where I claim to work – what's the point of them, what are the best ones, are they really legitimate cinema, and so on. Quite apart from the Swift film I was making strenuous efforts to get to see the re-release of Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense, which is also currently out.

Demme was another graduate of the Roger Corman school of film-making, starting his career with niche-interest fare like the women-in-prison film Caged Heat, but by the early 80s he was acquiring mainstream credibility, due to interestingly quirky films like this one and Something Wild. I'm sure there's an old maxim about true art being a question of what you decide to leave out; with Stop Making Sense it seems like Demme left virtually everything out, in the meaning that the director doesn't really seem to be doing very much of anything at all.

There is crowd noise; a pair of shoes amble into view, and it transpires they belong to David Byrne, chief songwriter and vocalist of the band Talking Heads. He wanders onto an almost totally bare stage (behind the scenes bits and pieces are visible behind him) carrying an acoustic guitar and a tape deck, and somewhat diffidently announces he'd like to play a tape for the crowd. The tape turns out to be the backing track for the 1977 song Psycho Killer, which Byrne performs solo. During the extended instrumental sequences which close out the song, as Byrne staggers rather affectedly around the stage, the technical start wheeling on risers and other bits of stage furniture.

This is so Tina Weymouth can join Byrne on stage for the next song, Heaven, accompanying him on the bass guitar. More bits and pieces (and members of Talking Heads) take their place on the stage – drummer Chris Frantz for Thank You for Sending Me An Angel, guitarist Jerry Harrison for Found a Job, supporting musicians and backing singers appearing as well. The backdrop slips into place and suddenly the line-up is complete; they proceed to do a really extremely funky version of Burning Down the House.

(I was attending the screening with the co-spousal unit, who was only really familiar with the Tom Jones/Cardigans cover version of this song, and afterwards she asked me if I knew which house it was and why it was on fire. I had to confess to ignorance at the time, but research has uncovered the fact that this is one of those songs where the tune came before the lyrics, and at one point it looked like it was going to be called 'Foam Rubber USA'. I believe this may be what people mean when they talk about art aspiring to the condition of music.)

Talking Heads often get pegged as an art rock band, which to me suggests something cerebral and slightly chilly, to be listened to repeatedly and reflected upon. I must confess to having enjoyed several of their songs in isolation, but not being that familiar with the group or their wider body of work prior to seeing the re-released movie – and there's a real sense of fun and energy and people having the time of their lives coming from the band as this opening sequence develops, a clever exercise in construction as deconstruction.

The middle part of the film is more like what you might expect: big screens flash up cryptic messages, the camera is more static, Byrne dances with a standard lamp (during This Must Be The Place). The frontman is a dominant and commanding presence, so it is a little startling when he cedes the stage so the rest of the band can reconstitute themselves as Tom Tom Club and perform Genius of Love (a song which inevitably feels very familiar, simply because it's been sampled to death over the years).

It turns out this is mainly so Byrne can be inserted into the Big Suit which is probably the enduring visual image of this film. The concert plays out with Byrne still in the suit, but the film feels like it's relaxing and becoming less formal, like the performance: Byrne pauses to introduce his fellow performers, while towards the end Demme even includes some shots of the audience, who are barely acknowledged for most of the film. (This was apparently because filming the crowd involved lighting the seating area, which upset the band and made them self-conscious: so the audience shots were all done on one night of the four across which the film was shot.)

It would be stretching things to suggest Stop Making Sense has any deeper meaning or subtext beyond those of the songs featured in the concert itself; you certainly don't come away feeling you've been given an insight into the band as people. It's really just a documentary in the purest sense of the word – a record of a concert (or series of concerts) with a few shrewd artistic decisions made to increase the authenticity of the experience. I say 'just' but there is surely value in this; bands playing live at the height of their powers are as worthy of preservation as anything else. This was clearly a series of great performances, and it's great to be able to enjoy them again forty years later. If Demme doesn't seem to be doing very much, it's all in the service of the music, which is surely as it should be: there is just enough film here to do justice to Talking Heads in concert, which I think is really the definition of what a concert movie should be about.

Awix

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