Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras Tour’ Movie Will Make You Sing, Scream, and Sob
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The first of many great moments in Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour movie: Right as the lights went down, the girl in Row H spoke up. “Oh my God, I should have asked permission before now, but we’re all gonna sing, right?” she pleaded in the dark. “Because I wanna sing!” A woman seated a few rows in front replied, “Sing loud and proud, sister.” And that’s all the discussion anyone needed about that. Because this was opening night of the Eras concert film, and nothing could have stopped the rowdy hellions in this crowd from singing, screaming, sobbing. Just as the tour is more daft and ambitious than anything else she’s tried onstage, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is unlike anything else she — or anyone else — has done onscreen.
Swift is a woman of many concert films, all with different approaches: Speak Now is the one with the craziest cover versions, Red is the one with the funniest backstage guest-star chitchat. But Eras is full immersion in a three-hour performance, with all the gargantuan emotional excess of the stadium version. There’s a reason this is a theater experience, as opposed to a streaming one. It’s designed for public consumption, for catharsis in the dark with total strangers, for making a scene. It’s the full-blast film experience that this songbook deserves. During “The One,” when Taylor sings the line, “You know the greatest films of all time were never made,” a fan near me yelled, “Until now!” My sentiments exactly.
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Taylor announced the film a few weeks ago, with no warning, set to open in October, on — when else? — Friday the 13th. Other movies opening this weekend had to scramble for cover, including the long-awaited horror sequel The Exorcist: Believer, which moved up a week to last weekend, proving that even Satan is scared of her. (The power of maple latte compels you!) Then, on less than 24 hours notice, Taylor announced she was opening the film early, on Thursday night. That’s how I ended up at the AMC in Union Square, surrounded by the dive bars of the East Village, a few blocks north of Cornelia Street, in a theater full of fans who grabbed early tickets on New York time. (My ticket was $19.89; kids got in for just $13.13.) The short notice meant hardly any fans in full costume; the truly elaborate conceptual fits are probably getting saved for the proper Friday night blowouts.
Just sitting in a theater full of blood-hungry Swifties is a uniquely festive cinematic experience. Everybody could even enjoy the trailer that announced, “Hey, Swifties — get ready for your next musical celebration!” The film has no fussing around, no intro or preamble — it goes bang into the countdown clock ticking the final seconds until the show begins, although without her live walk-on theme, Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.” Given the social-media obsession over the tour all year long, and the way anyone can follow each stop’s fan videos, the whole audience knew the plot, whether they’d seen the tour live or not. The first line the whole audience sang together: “She’s a bad, bad girl!” The first bridge everyone crossed together: “Cruel Summer.” The first stage banter everybody yelled on cue: “You make me feel so powerful … you make me feel like ‘The Maaaan!’” (Also, a shout-out to the Swiftie who arranged the posters in the theater lobby so this was right next to Killers of the Flower Moon. Somebody definitely had “I’d be just like Leo in Saint Tropez” on the brain.)
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is an L.A. performance from late in the summer run, after she’d already taken her show across most of North America. It runs two hours and 45 minutes, a half-hour shorter than the actual show, by trimming out costume changes, stage banter, and ovations. (The only moment missed is the “Seven”/“Wildest Dreams” narration segment, a prerecorded but moving voice-over as she says, “If you wish to romanticize the woman I became, then say you’ll remember me standing in a nice dress, staring at the sunset.”) Director Sam Wrench is a veteran of concert movies for Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Brandi Carlile, and BTS, as well as a ton of Christmas specials. He doesn’t make this too busy, never gets in the way of the music. Onscreen, there’s more spotlight moments for the musicians and dancers, but also more visible details in Taylor’s fashion choices, like her sequined Christian LouBoutin ankle boots during the Red interlude.
As in the tour, the Evermore moment is the peak of the movie — it might just be her second or third-best studio album, but these are the songs that expand the most in this setting. “Willow” is the most audacious moment, an art-goth coven gathering with Taylor’s Halloween witchery in a swirl of black capes and glowing orange pumpkin-globes. (This “Willow” might end up an even scarier horror film than Exorcist: Believer?) There’s the Steve Reich/Terry Riley electronics of “Marjorie,” with her grandmother’s voice singing opera over the speaker (beautifully underplayed in the movie, though live she usually says a few words for Marjorie), or “Tolerate It,” a very different dinner scene when you see the faces this close up. There were audible groans and whimpers of pain when she sat at her moss-covered piano for “Champagne Problems.” Wisely, the film cuts most of the ovation following that song; it started out as an organic fan statement, but like a lot of organic things, it changed when it got to Hollywood, and who needs eight minutes of L.A. being a needy little princess auditioning for this woman’s attention?
The Folklore sequence is equally powerful — these are songs originally made and heard in the isolation of quarantine, so the stage pageantry has a big emotional payoff. Especially in the grief-stricken elegy “My Tears Ricochet,” which really blows up in this ghostly seance of a performance when Taylor rips into the line, “I still talk to you, when I’m screaming at the sky,” and truly screams it at the sky. (A woman in the back of the theater yelled, “Tell the truth, Taylor!”) Also, Folklore is the part of the movie where Taylor gets really sweaty, which suits the let-it-all-hang-out overdrive of the songs. The absolute fiercest audience howls of the night came for the bridge of “Illicit Affairs,” with Taylor dropping to her knees to snarl, “Don’t call me kid! Don’t call me baby!”
At every stop of the tour, she does an acoustic set with two surprise songs. In the movie, it’s a clever pairing: “Our Song” on acoustic guitar, which gives some love to the otherwise neglected debut album. (The full-grown Tay doesn’t try to revive her faux-Southern high-school twang, another wise move.) Then she does “You’re on Your Own, Kid” at the piano, the adult Taylor looking back with empathy at the nervous, always-trying-too-hard teenage Taylor, the desperate kid she used to be and the kid she knows she’s on some level doomed to stay. It’s a dialogue across 17 years, but you can also hear that both of these Taylors are the same difficult-but-real woman.
The Midnights interlude ends the movie with a bang, although some of the songs sure hit different these days, as opposed to a few weeks ago. Hell, half the Midnights lyrics now sound like they could be texts to Joe Jonas’ legal team. She keeps a final surprise for the end credits: “Long Live,” the Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) climax, a rock anthem for summing up where the show leaves off. Not a single freaking audience member left the theater during the credits. As soon as the final lights came up, the girls behind me yelled, “Don’t go! She’s gonna come back and do ‘Haunted’!” Not tonight, unfortunately. But don’t put it past her to add surprise bonus songs for next weekend.
These days we’ve all got Stop Making Sense on the brain, thanks to the spiffy new screen edition of Jonathan Demme’s classic 1984 film of Talking Heads. It’s always been universally hailed as the gold standard of the rock concert film. But Eras Tour really does evoke Stop Making Sense, as a strictly-business movie that tells the story of a music performance, without falling into the trap of framing it as a simulacrum or substitute for the real thing. This IS the real thing. Both films avoid the manipulative cliches of the genre — no fan interviews, no backstage melodrama, no voice-over explication, just a night of music where everybody is a star. And in a way, Stop Making Sense is an Eras Tour, too — you could say “Miss America” is her “Psycho Killer,” “Enchanted” is her “This Must Be the Place” lamp dance, and “Los Angeles, do you wanna go back to high school with me?” is her “Who’s got a match?” But that’s the historic standard of excellence this film aims to meet. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is one of the all-time great live performers aiming higher — and louder — than ever. Sorry, Satan — you’re on your own, kid.
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