The Cure: 40th Anniversary – LIVE at Hyde Park, London – The Cure: Anniversary 1978-2018 Live at Hyde Park (2019)

Directed by: Tim Pope | 137 minutes | documentary, music

Swept red lipstick and jet-black-rimmed eyes in an otherwise milky white face, a disheveled clump of hair on the head that is held up with lots of hairspray, invariably black clothes and scruffy brothel sneaks on the feet. You can draw Robert Smith like this. In mysterious light and with a lot of obscuring smoke, he reveals his melancholy reflections, shares his fears, despair and insecurities through his music. But where the music exudes a stifling gloom one minute, that quintessential New Wave vibe can just as easily be exchanged for a hyper-excited, sugar-sweet jump the next. It is characteristic of The Cure, the band that is categorized as ‘gothic’ by default, but doesn’t have much with it themselves. “We can’t be categorized,” Smith said in 2006. “I suppose we were post-punk when we first started, but it’s impossible to leave a mark on us. I just make Cure music, whatever that may be.’

In addition to the striking signboard, Smith has also been the only constant factor in the British band The Cure for forty years, which debuted in the spring of 1978 with a concert at The Rocket in Crawley’s hometown. Exactly forty years later (7 June 2018), the band is performing an anniversary concert in the famous Hyde Park in London, where other greats have already given unforgettable concerts. In two hours and fifteen minutes, Smith and his men perform an almost perfectly balanced setlist of major and minor hits, fan favorites, mood pieces and obscurities, which together form a very complete cross-section of the band’s oeuvre. The lion’s share of the songs comes from the 1989 album ‘Disintegration’, which connoisseurs consider the magnum opus of The Cure, including ‘Plainsong’, ‘Pictures of You’, ‘Lovesong’, ‘Fascination Street’ and Lullaby’. But also sing-alongs like ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, ‘Friday I’m in Love’, ‘Why Can’t I Be You’, ‘Close to me’ and ‘A Forest’ are not forgotten, just like ‘Jumping Someone’. Else’s Train’, one of the band’s earliest hits that hadn’t been performed live for years. For the real Cure fan it is a feast, because the band not only plays so many songs, but is also in excellent shape. Sure, Smith – who still dresses like he used to – has aged a few years, grayer and fatter, but hasn’t forgotten the performance. In fact, he seems to enjoy the performance more than ever and seems genuinely surprised that The Cure is still so successful four decades later.

What makes the concert registration ‘The Cure: 40th Anniversary in Hyde Park’ so fun and authentic is the fact that the band is reunited with director Tim Pope, who shot a total of around forty video clips with The Cure and also in 1987 the legendary concert that the band gave in the French city of Orange in the music documentary ‘The Cure in Orange’. Thanks in part to his characteristic video clips, in which he invariably added a touch of humor so that the emphasis was no longer on Smith’s psychological obsessions, The Cure media grew into a worldwide commercial success in the eighties. In Hyde Park he bathes the band in warm golden-yellow light and lush widescreen recordings, in which both the roaring-alongs and the melancholic synth-pop of ‘Disintegration’ come out perfectly. This special concert registration is absolutely not to be missed for fans of The Cure, but also not for other music lovers.