Documentary Review: 'Bono – Stories of Surrender'

Missing the show, finding the story

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In 2022, I found myself in New York, near the end of a trip, waiting for Bono’s memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, to be published. I’ve been a die-hard U2 fan since Achtung Baby, so the timing felt fated. Around that same time, Bono announced a live performance at the Beacon Theatre — a theatrical reading of the book, with music and stories. I thought about postponing my return flight just to see it. But the ticket price was eye-watering, and I missed it. Watching Bono: Stories of Surrender, I now understand exactly what I missed — and somehow, it feels like I caught up with something I had only brushed past.

There’s something both admirable and precarious when a global icon like Bono decides to lay his life bare on stage. Bono: Stories of Surrender, directed by Andrew Dominik, is presented as an intimate one-man show, a hybrid of personal monologue, stripped-down musical performance, and autobiographical reflection. Based on his memoir, the film documents a series of live performances from 2023 at the Beacon Theatre in New York, an evening that’s equal parts theater, sermon, and curated self-portrait.

Visually, Dominik opts for a dramatic atmosphere: dim lighting, sharp contrasts, and slow-moving camera work that stays close to Bono. Shot in elegant black-and-white, it’s not a concert in the traditional sense. It’s part monologue, part memory, part musical meditation — a “quarter-man” show, as Bono half-jokingly calls it, performed without his three longtime bandmates.

The staging is minimal: a table, a few chairs, a cellist, a harpist, and Bono, often in silhouette, delivering stories with humor, humility, and the occasional flourish of well-worn Bono-speak. A cabaret performance. If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at Bono’s earnestness, you might still find yourself softening here. There’s something disarming in how openly he approaches his contradictions, the showman who wants to be taken seriously, the activist who’s never been sure if admiration for his causes is just admiration for himself.