Eno

It’s still a sad mystery how the Philly screening(s?) of Eno, a groundbreaking documentary about famed musician and producer Brian Eno, came and went early last year without crossing my radar. I’ve met the filmmakers, Gary Hustwit and Brendan Dawes, on various occasions in the past and would have loved to say hi and get eyes on Brain One, the generative engine they built for the film, with hardware designed by Teenage Engineering. As the world’s first generative feature film, Eno is a different experience every time it’s screened, at least when Hustwit and Dawes and Brain One are in the house. The streaming version, though, at least for now, is pre-baked. Criterion Channel, where I watched it, will be featuring a different version each month. I wonder how many months/versions there will be, and if their generation will be truly randomized or tuned/curated for maximum variety. I guess I’ll find out soon.

There are said to be 52 quintillion possible versions of Eno, each of which is assembled with varying degrees of randomness from over 500 hours of available footage, which is appropriate for its subject, whose history of unorthodox approaches includes generative music. The version currently on Criterion has a conspicuous greatest-hits feel, giving equal time to Eno’s most famous work with Roxy Music, David Bowie, Talking Heads, and U2, as well as his Oblique Strategies cards and invention of ambient music. Whether or not the viewer is interested in any of those specific projects, they’re really just entry points; the beauty of the film and its underpinnings are their understanding of the work’s connective tissue, which is Eno’s tireless fascination with the human mechanics of creativity. He’s made a long career of being thoughtful about art and generous with those thoughts, and this film is a fitting tribute and an appropriately novel exploration.