Singer and mother Beyoncé just recently finished a world tour for her album “Renaissance.” She visited all around the world to perform for millions of people, and on Dec. 1, released a documentary on her journey and process of this tour titled “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé.”
In her movie, she takes us through the downs and ups, highlights and memories of the show. She goes on to perform a variety of songs like “America Has a Problem,” “Cuff It,” “Drunk in Love,” “Dangerously in Love” and many others. Beyoncé refers to “Renaissance” as a “time for a new beginning.” The process for the making of the performance was very long, she mentioned it took four years just for this show to happen. She wanted to create a space where everyone was free and could be themselves on that stage, and to her, that’s what the Renaissance is about.
The importance of this documentary for her was not the singing, but for people to see the behind-the-scenes because it wasn’t an easy process. She describes it as a long and exhausting process, especially with the time they had. Alongside her during the making was her whole family—her husband, Jay-Z, and her daughters, Blue, Rumi and Sir. As someone who went to the concert and then saw the set up of it after, it was very cool. In one of her shows she ends up losing power and audio while performing and her team quickly helped her recover. They take us behind the scenes of what was happening and how they resolved the issue so fast, which was fascinating to see.
Beyoncé’s family was a big part of this tour, especially her oldest daughter. Blue was a participant in the performance, and for Beyoncé, it was a hard decision to make. Her daughter is 11 years old and she told her mom at the start that she was ready to perform and be part of this tour. Originally, her mom was going to only let her perform in one city, but a video of Blue dancing started to go viral, and some of the comments were not very positive. That encouraged Blue and Beyoncé for her to keep performing. Blue started to practice more and more for each show and started steadily improving, and she was loved by everyone.
At a point of the documentary, Beyoncé pauses to talk about balancing her two lives. Besides making music and performing, she is a mother of three, still taking her kids to school. She talks about how kids don’t care what your job is and what you do, at the end of the day they just want you to be there for them, and that’s exactly what she does. No matter if she just finished a concert or worked on a song, she makes that time for her kids.
For this documentary, I honestly have no critiques except for that three hours was a little too long for my liking. I think she fit everything she could in there and maybe could’ve done it in under three hours.
Overall, Beyoncé did a great job on making not just her documentary but the tour as well. She really showed the real process and outcome of these events in the last couple of months, as well as her dedication and precision to make a great experience for us. She gave us another view of the concert, but also gave us backstory and history. If you saw her perform live or even like her music, I would recommend seeing this documentary.
“Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé”: ★★★★☆
