Ultimately, ‘Bono: Stories of Surrender’ is a film beyond Bono – a meditation on what it means to be alive and to keep becoming in the face of death and defeat, and through Bono’s exploration we can also be changed and transformed into a better version of ourselves.

We have perhaps all been a witness to the story of U2 in different epochs in their cross-generational story and music that has touched and transformed so many peoples lives across nearly fifty years of an incredible musical journey.

The recent film Bono: Stories of Surrender released on May 30, 2025, documents a 2023 performance by Bono at the Beacon Theatre in New York City during his one-man stage show “Stories of Surrender: An Evening of Words, Music and Some Mischief…” which was undertaken to promote his 2022 memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.

This is a stunning monochrome film capturing the story of U2 and of Bono’s personal losses, loves, challenges, and triumphs with a sense of mesmerizing candor, which is highlighted with an emotional performance of some of U2’s most pivotal songs that are cast within an entirely new frame of reflection. The introspective intimacy of this beguiling film necessitates a reckoning with death and loss in one’s own life as to how this is intensely experienced in Bono’s life and his artistic journey.

'Bono: Stories of Surrender' promotional poster — ‘Bono: Stories of Surrender’ promotional poster

The theme of surrender is deeply explored in this cinematic performance. revealing how it ed to a new frame of recognition in Bono’s personal life as he intimately reflects on a life lived at the edges of fame, faith, and fragility.

In turn, this film poses a very intensive reflection on the meaning of surrender and what this means in regard to love, to grief, to fame, to aging, and ultimately – to the humility that comes when one realizes how little control we have over the experiences and dynamics that shape our lives.

Bono provides us with the insight into the world-shifting effect of contingency which as it was for Bono through meeting his bandmates and future wife Ali at a simultaneous time during one week that radically changed his world. All of those moments are also at hand for all of us, as it just about random chance and being open to experience the world differently.

In turn, Bono leads us through episodes of his life – from his childhood in Dublin, marked by the early loss of his mother, to the intense and sacred bond with his bandmates, to his subsequent passionate activism for human rights and global health – in reflecting on all of these aspects with remarkable openness and a deep sense of self-deprecation. A central emotional dynamic of this film is Bono’s relationship with his wife Ali which he acutely situates as a central testament to a remarkably enduring partnership which has been the pillar of his life and career.

Bono’s reimagining of some of U2’s most spectacular hits in this performance are refracted as deeply personal ballads in a revealing sense of emotional honesty amidst the weight and shadows of his father and his lifelong reckoning with the absence of his mother, Iris.

As I viewed this remarkable performance by Bono, I was acutely reflecting on the loss of my own parents and their indelible imprints on my own life within their immense absence as to who I am in this world. The reality of their loss is always impalpable, and one needs to relearn how to live in the world. My father passed in 2001, and my mother nineteen years later. Over time you inhabit their memories in different ways and there is always a persistent ache of being in missing their remarkable presence that shaped who you are in the world.

There are parts of you that appear forever lost through the trauma of death, and yet over time the uncanny aspect is that through a resurfacing of memory one inhabits their absence in a strangely new intimate manner that appears as comfort that also chills to the bone.

A little over a year ago, I also lost a dear childhood friend after sharing an incredible weekend of reconnection in Montréal in summer 2023 after an absence of nearly twenty years and our time together felt like the years of our youth. During that weekend, we delighted in each other’s company as we soared on wonderful rooftop bars, dined in darkened rooms, and ambled through the beautiful cobblestone streets of Old Montréal until we would often settle into a hidden basement speakeasy until the late hours. My last memory of him was standing in the square of the Notre-Dame Basilica of Montréal as we were listening to a busker perform a rather brilliant interpretation of New Order’s “Temptation” before we had our final rooftop bar and dining experience during another brilliant night of reconnection and dreams of traveling together to Italy and beyond. That trip to Italy never happened, and less than a year later he succumbed to cancer. I felt an immense gap in my soul that reverberates till this day as I continue to reflect on mortality and how this is inextricably felt through the death of friends in which we lose a very intimate part of how we exist in the world.

In turn, one of the most poignant aspects of Bono: Stories of Surrender is its profound contemplation of mortality as Bono candidly speaks of his fears, of his grappling with God, and of trying to understand the ephemeral nature of life in the face of global fame and deep personal loss.

This film is a ground-breaking experience that begs us to intensely sit with the weight of memory, to simultaneously confront the dimensions of our own existential losses and longings, and to consider what it means to surrender – not as as sense of defeat, but as an act of grace within our own eventual mortal demise.

Ultimately, Bono: Stories of Surrender is a film beyond Bono – a meditation on what it means to be alive and to keep becoming in the face of death and defeat, and through Bono’s exploration we can also be changed and transformed into a better version of ourselves.

My viewing of this film has changed me dramatically in impacting how I reflect on my own experience and the world within my own losses, and through a immensely emotional performance, Bono has provided all of us with uncanny tools on how to shape our own destiny out of the darkest periods of our lives.

There are indeed intense shards of darkness in U2’s song “Beautiful Day,” as was deeply exposed at the end of this film, and this is the crucial insight that all of us should have known all those years ago in listening to this song as we come to grips with our own meaning and significance in the world.

All I can say beyond this, is that you really need to immerse yourself in this film, as it is one that is certainly beyond the ages, and maybe in this realm you can also rediscover your own self and what this means in your relations with others in this world. After all, and as the saying goes – life is too short.

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