21st century raconteur-troubadour Laurie Anderson shames the entire notion of the 'music video' with this filmed performance from her Mr. Heartbreak Tour. Perhaps the biggest surprise about the movie is that it wasn't made earlier: Anderson's audio/visual exhibitionism depends as much (if not more) on sight as it does on sound, and her recordings alone give little indication of the imagination and humor of her stage act. Employing a dazzling array of electronic effects and state-of-the-art musical instruments (for example a functioning keyboard necktie), she dances, sings, tells peculiar stories, jerks around like a marionette, and in general puts on a show that's as much fun to watch as it must have been to perform, with none of the pretensions normally associated with mass media performance art.
