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Spirits in the Forest: A Depeche Mode Film
****
Dir: Anton Corbijn
Starring: Depeche Mode
(UK, 1hr35mins)
All has been fairly quiet with Depeche Mode over the last year and a bit, but things are hotting up with the ‘one night only’ showing of this film and a lavish career-spanning box set ready to drop later this month. With ‘Spirits in the Forest’, film and creative director Anton Corbijn has directed a film that makes other music related celluloid seem as visually slick as an episode of Crossroads and about as emotionally moving as watching University Challenge on a wet Wednesday. Admittedly, Corbijn’s work has always been visually striking – with an element of humour occasionally thrown in, but with Spirits in the Forest, he really has seriously upped the ante.
Spirits in the Forest is not just a film of Depeche Mode playing the last shows of their Global Spirit Tour in 2018 at Berlin’s Waldbühne. Neither is it a modernised rehash of DA Pennebaker’s 101 documentary released in 1989, which featured a bus load of competition-winning fans following Depeche Mode on their Music for the Masses tour in America and ended with the legendary Pasadena Rose Bowl gig, where the Mode played to 60,000 screaming fans. Without any disrespect to 101, Spirits in the Forest digs a hell of a lot deeper than 101 did. Corbijn’s film features six fans from different corners of the globe, rather than just one geographic location. The fans’ life stories are empowering, deeply moving and beautifully shot, entwined with powerful live footage of the Mode playing live at Waldbühne. In this film, Dave Gahan holds the crowd in the palm of his hand, a consumate frontman and showman. The electricity between the audience and band on stage is breathtaking to watch.
Spirits in the Forest is a celebration of both human diversity and the power of music, that will make you shed a tear one minute and punch the air the next: a truly remarkable film, with some great music to boot.
words David Nobakht
Spirits in the Forest is in cinemas for one night only on Thu 21 Nov. For more info, see here