“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” Review
After continuously astonishing fans and critics with hit albums after hit album, Taylor Swift has released “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” an explosive concert film detailing one of the most talked-about tours of recent years.
Going into the theater to see “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour”, I wouldn’t consider myself a big Taylor Swift fan. Not that I dislike her or her music, I just never thought of her music as essential listening for me. I have always admired her as a talented singer/songwriter and really enjoyed seeing her reclaim ownership of the master recordings of her earlier albums by rerecording them. However, you’d have to be blind to not see the incredible popularity of The Eras Toru, her first tour in five years. Not only were the tickets ungodly expensive, which got more people to pay attention to the stranglehold a company like Ticketmaster has on the music industry, but those that did go didn’t just love the concert, they were obsessed. The way attendees described going to see Taylor Swift, you’d have thought that they had just been to Woodstock or another musical moment of equal significance.
So, when a concert film was announced, I was interested, especially when I saw that Taylor Swift decided to forgo releasing the film on streaming in favor of an exclusively theatrical release. With the momentum around this film rivaling the release of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” on the same weekend, it was inevitable that I would go see this film and see the theatrical event of this fall. Well, not only did I enjoy the film, but I have become fully converted into a Taylor Swift fan. Seeing this amalgamation of Swift’s entire musical journey condensed into a three hour show gave me the chance to reconsider her as an artist and enhanced my appreciation of her music and her status as a pop culture icon.
Filmed during three shows (August 3, 4 and 5) at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, the film captures the monstrous juggernaut of the Eras Tour. Between the last time she toured in 2018, to promote her album “Reputation”, and this current series of concerts, a lot has changed in Swift’s life. After leaving Big Machine Records, Swift not only produced four new albums with a company that allowed her to own the original master recordings but she also rerecorded four of her earlier albums. With such a strong creative output, Swift couldn’t just limit her next tour to promoting one or two of these new works. Instead, Swift created a three hour odyssey to take fans across her entire career with an eclectic range of songs from her most recent album “Midnights” to her self-titled debut from 2006.
As the producer and star of the film, Swift’s bold vision has beautifully transferred both to the concert arena and to the big screen. Taylor Swift has had a good eye for cinematic images for quite some time especially since she ventured into directing with the “Folklore” documentary on Disney+ and her short film “All Too Well”, which is based on her song of the same name from the album “Red”. But with this concert, everything is next level. With ten acts, each section of the show has a completely different aesthetic. That means different costumes, different set-pieces, different projections and, of course, different songs that encapsulate the various times of Swift.
Taylor Swift just commands every second of this film. Seeing her perform for three hours really showed me just how committed she is to her music and to her fans by giving them everything they could possibly want and so much more. The love she has for her audience is so obvious and it makes her such a positive figure to gravitate towards. From her interactions with concertogers to the way she mingles with her dancers, backing vocalists and band, it’s clear that she wants everyone to have a good time and to feel like they are welcome and loved.
With such passion in her performance, Swift’s natural charisma leaps off the screen as she appears to emulate may iconic performers, like Stevie Nicks, David Byrne and Freddie Mercury, while still carving her own way as a respected musician and incredible entertainer.
The amount of control she has over the collective soul of the audience is truly astonishing and can rival some of the greatest performers of all time. There’s one moment of the concert where she just points her finger to different parts of the crowd to get that section to cheer, even joking that this kind of power is dangerous for her to have. It felt somewhat reminiscent of the interaction that someone like Freddie Mercury would have with the audience.
Swift did a fantastic job with the order of these songs, taking the viewer on this massive journey. However, the Eras aren’t in chronological order because Swift isn’t interested in a logical progression from her self-titled album to “Midnights”. Instead, it’s all about a greater perception of the many lives she’s lived and her constant reinvention. Over the course of her career, Swift’s discography has seen her go from roots in country music to different flavors of pop, rock and folk with Swift constantly surprising with each album.
Each and every one of these Eras is unbelievable with Sam Wrench really triumphing as the film's director. The footage that he and cinematographer Brett Turnbull were able to capture and stitch together with editor Dom Whitworth is magical. Everyone’s energy on the stage, behind the scenes and behind the cameras all shines through with such a kinetic feeling of energy. While some portions of the show are more smooth and laid back and others are fast-paced, the whole film flows incredibly well and there’s never a dull moment.
As someone who loves to watch concert films, I can say with great certainty that this is one of the best I’ve ever seen. While I don’t think it could rival “The Last Waltz” or “Stop Making Sense”, there’s just so much great music, energy and cinematic beauty that it’s hard not to mention these films together in the same sentence alongside films like “The Song Remains the Same”, “Woodstock” and “Bullet in a Bible”. Throughout the show, you also get a strong feeling that Swift has not just seen a lot of these great concert films but has taken direct influence from them. The elegant settings of some of these Eras could certainly look like the operatic sets used for “The Last Waltz”, all of the costume changes reminded me of the different looks the members of Talking Heads had for their iconic concert film and one song sequence, for “Vigilante Shit”, has clear nods to Bob Fosse’s iconic choreography. Even the lyrics of some of Swift’s songs, which decry critics of her ever evolving musical portfolio, persona and personal life, feel slightly reminiscent of Bob Dylan hounding off angry fans and skeptical journalists in “Don't Look Back”.
I applaud Swift for understanding the need to document this concert in such a cinematic manner since it is one of the most important and popular musical events of recent years. It also gives fans who couldn't afford the tickets a chance to see this film with pristine cinematic quality in a theater.
What’s remarkable about “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” isn’t just how jaw-dropping the whole production is, but also how it affected me. Despite never being the biggest fan, never having gone to any of her concerts and not listening to her albums the day they were released, I was amazed at just how many times the film reminded me that Swift wrote this iconic song. When Swift’s first album came out, I was six-years-old. Swift’s music has essentially been the soundtrack for my entire generation and plenty of those songs have made their way into my brain where they lay dormant until I saw this film. So, when Swift played songs like “Our Song”, “22” and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”, I found myself involuntarily singing along with all of the other Swifties in the crowd.
I felt the ecstatic joy that all of these fans and Taylor Swift herself felt whenever she would perform a live show or release a new album. Seeing this film cemented Swift as one of the great performers of our age and, with a career that is nearly 20 years old and already iconic, I think her status as a musical legend has all but been confirmed.
