Sam Wrench’s film, shot over three LA shows, offers a front-row seat to Swift’s tenacity as an artist; a proof of her cultural currency, it gives a peek into her formidable legacy
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, the film on the singer’s ongoing disruptive tour, is everything one expects it to be. It is a breathless distillation of the singer’s music excursion that commenced in March last year and a pulsating reminder of her giant talent. It is a front-row seat to Swift’s tenacity as an artist as she belts out dozens of songs, covers the enormity of the stage with effortless ease like she is walking on air and holds up an accelerated recap of her career through the years. The outing is also proof of her cultural currency and a peek into her legacy, reiterating the highlights of a musical event that continues infiltrating social media and holding even her naysayers to a chokehold.
Directed by Sam Wrench, who has previously helmed Billie Eilish Live At The O2 (2023) and BTS Permission to Dance on Stage — Seoul: Live Viewing Film (2021), The Eras Tour is a true-blue concert film which makes no allowance for backstage footage or space for interviews. There is no pause, let alone an interval. The only recurring visual comprises Swift gunning for a performance so complete in intent that every gesture of hers on stage appears to be imbued with purpose. In that sense the film offers an invigorating but a blank slate of sorts, inviting the onlooker to lend meaning to the act.
Her aesthetic and athletic agility
The innate sensory experience it evokes makes things easy. Wrench’s film, shot over three Los Angeles shows, is a stupendous display of craft and a compelling testimony to Swift’s reputation as a storyteller. The production is off the charts. Like a phoenix fated to only rise, the singer keeps elevating from the stage no matter where she stands. At one point, the ground opens up and she dives, creating an illusion of swimming underwater till she appears on the other end, with not one hair out of place. She remains as unperturbed during the 200-odd minutes of her performance —dancing, moving, jiving to her own voice.
The format is designed to supplement this immersiveness. The singer has divided the Eras Tour into nine sections – Lover (2019), Fearless (2008), Evermore (2020), Reputation (2017), Speak Now (2010), Red (2012), Folklore (2020), 1989 (2014) and Midnights (2022) — the stratification meant to touch upon her nine albums and showcase her inventiveness in recreating them on stage. She dons a white dress for Folklore, a red bodysuit with snake motifs for Reputation, sings Lover with a guitar in hand and sits before a piano before we know it. There is an unseen aesthetic agility here, versatile in the ambition it strives for. Wrench keeps an undeterred focus on her, only sparingly including the reaction shots.
What emerges is a demonstration of her journey from the start. Swift’s growth as a song-writer has been phenomenal (the crowd erupts when she sings, “I’ve been the archer/ I’ve been the prey/ Who could ever leave me, darling? But who could stay?”), but it is the dichotomy which is arresting. She effortlessly glides from Love Story (Fearless, 2008) to All Too Well, transitions from desperation to submission without breaking a sweat as her vulnerability as an artist is matched by the endurance of an athlete.
The story and the storyteller
The result is fascinating, with the crowd dancing to her every gesture, every mood. Swift knows this and she plays along. In the sold-out SoFi Stadium, she stands as both the story and the storyteller. While she has been on tour, the upheavals in her personal life (break-up with the British actor Joe Alwyn, a brief hand-held liaison with the English singer Matty Healy and now the very public relationship with the NFL star Travis Kelce) has been in public for all to consume. Swift is aware that she is the centre of the collective gaze, and she uses the narrative crafted around her to craft the narrative she wants to float.
As a female singer writing about heartbreaks, she has been long subjected to scrutiny and her work treated with a cursory interest one reserves for speculative fiction. As the songs in the Tour keep coming, the ‘you’ in them keeps changing. Swift holds nothing back, adapting her tone to the ache of someone who has been left behind and twinging her vocals with the pain of someone who has left. The singer kisses her biceps before launching into The Man and looks down while crooning Champagne Problems, a song about a girl leaving the boy she loved sung by her at a concert in the aftermath of her own breakup. As the crowd goes wild, the image evokes multiple questions: is she enacting or is she feeling? Is she the writer of the words or is she stuck as the word of her own writing? Does she write about her life or does she live to make it verse? There is no way to tell, and Swift gives nothing away.
But as she concludes her marathon of a concert, her face radiates with gratification and love. The camera then turns to the other side, pausing on those who feverishly matched her lyric with every word. The joy in their disposition is hard to miss, evident even through the flashlight of the phones. Suddenly it ceases to matter who the songs were written for. All the faces meld into one and the narratives collapse to compose an imagery of a dark room and two people looking at each other — the artist and her listener, the wordsmith and her words. The relationship has survived every heartbreak through decades of heartache. Swift insists it’s a love story and the crowd says yes.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is currently streaming on Disney+ Hotstar
