Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour film is as exhilarating as anything you might see in a cinema this year

The Eras Tour is as much an anomaly as it is an experiment. (Screen grab/YouTube/Taylor Swift)

Chances are that if you were watching a film at a theatre near you this weekend that coincided with the timings of a certain concert film, you could probably hear people scream, wail and copiously hoot through what are supposed to be sound-proof walls. Who said the concert film is dead or that in a post-pandemic world, the idea of the gig or showmanship so crucial to the rise of rock-and-roll, itself is dead. Taylor Swift’s ongoing Eras Tour, has broken records, smashed patriarchal ideas around globalism and practically upstaged formatted events as this relentless juggernaut of superstardom which may eventually crown the singer as the biggest artist alive. Watching a two-and-a-half-hour film of her famed tour isn’t like the actual thing, but comes pretty close to whatever second-hand performative and musical heaven feels like.

Concert films were dead. They briefly reared their head during the pandemic, but the idea of a concert film as being a little more than a memory block, had de-aged to the point that they probably felt as redundant a relaxing chair in the middle of a head-banging chorus. To which point, watching Swift’s concert film (alongside hundreds of Swiftians mind you), is an exercise in adaptation and abandonment. It’s eerie to be hemmed in by space, by the liminality of a dark theatre at first to only be pulled out of it, whiplashed into losing your tongue and orientation by a performer so exemplary, even a dull screen can hardly flatten her aura, her ability to core of about any form of entropy. “You’re my soulmate crowd,” she says at one point to whoever was lucky to attend the actual event. It’s a sentiment echoed by those watching her up-close, in a setting that is as surreal for an Indian audience, as it must be for the people hosting them. Indian theatres probably aren’t equipped to handle the playful mania of fandom like this piece.

The Eras Tour is a lengthy but flawless mix of performative elegance and technological brevity that despite its devotion of a superstar, has a fair bit of cinematic tricks up its sleeve. In fact, in cheerfully self-appraising ways, it offers you aspects of the show - the intimate close-ups, the arena-sized views of all the flashy technology (a rendition of a giant cobra slithering into the audience might just give you give you goosebumps), the sense of a curated outlook that could, in a live concert manifest as confusion and anarchy. The film was shot over three different shows in Los Angeles and is divided into 10 acts that cover the singer’s discography. The epic act is punctuated by more than just that gifted vocal cord. There’s acting, exquisite set-pieces, sensational choreography, bewitching design and a light sound show carnival that could be marvelled at in isolation. If not for the woman, seamlessly pulling its strings.

Swift’s music isn’t for everyone, especially people on the other side of existential resignation, but her stardom feels infectious, even through the relatively insulated version that most Indians will see it through. There is grace, elegance, beauty but most of all there is this profound magnetism, this ethereal hand propelling showmanship that would drag, even sulking bores like myself out of their seats. Music maybe is a sort of drug and in a crowd convulsing, chanting and besides themselves with glee and abandon, it feels ever so dizzying and comforting. So much about Swift’s music is uplifting that you get why the popstar’s pedigree has risen the more the world has gravitated towards disillusionment and collective paranoia. Which means you’ll probably join the chorus on ‘Evermore’ or practically spill your guts out at ‘Trouble’.

The Eras Tour is as much an anomaly as it is an experiment. In a year where we have witnessed Barbenheimer, it is a bullish, but also deserved attempt at turning the theatrical experience on its head by replacing manufactured reality with heightened reality. Yes, there is a rough narrative to the show but it is, for the sake of simplification, one ‘banger’ after the other, with the slower tracks fitted in to offer a moment’s breath. At some point you wonder if the film actually needed to be as long as the show itself. It’s longer than any playlist you’ll ever devour in a single go but then maybe the whole point of a concert is to submit to its whims, withdraw for at least those hours, the tendency to reach for the skip button.

As for a cinematic tribute to a landmark event, The Eras Tour is every bit as exhilarating as anything you might watch this year at the movies. Even the pulpiest, most mass cinema you might see won’t come close to the euphoria of watching a generational performer set to court comparisons with music’s demigods. Not because her work is ebulliently deep or affectingly corny in its pre-teenage conception, but because Swift has become the vessel, that entire oceans feel pulled by. Of course, it takes technical craft, aural wizardry and a whole lot of post-pubertal angst to feed on, but there is something undeniably Era-defining in this massive, shattering, roving exhibition of limitless stardom.

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour film is playing in select theatres.