One Shot With Ed Sheeran review – Well-planned spontaneity from a smiling diva | film

eSheeran floats through New York on a cloud of sunny spirits in this hour-long Netflix special. He’s the Candide of the music industry, smiling sweetly, strumming and singing, pausing seamlessly for selfies, fist bumps and high-fives; It almost visibly absorbs the energy from the saucer-eyed fan worship displayed by stunned bystanders and radiates it back at them.

You probably have to be a Sheeran fan to really appreciate it, but this is another particularly gritty film from filmmaker Philip Barantini (who directed the edgy one-man drama “Adolescent” on Netflix) and his director of photography Nyk Allen. Without any cuts (although there is a quick bit allowed, and the audio may have been edited in post-production) they follow an unconscious Ed as he completes a late-afternoon sound check at a New York theater where he later plays a concert, and then for the next hour, with fans always raging at him, he wanders the city carrying his guitar to various encounters, some planned and some (supposedly) not.

At one point, Sheeran plays a song when a colleague proposes to his girlfriend, then he throws an impromptu party on a tour bus, then he performs at a rooftop birthday party (there’s a hilariously uncomfortable scene of him riding in an elevator in silence with a puzzled businessman he’s not impressed with) and at a bar where he’s congregating with some other friends. He then makes his way to the subway to play on the train – and then, without a hitch, finds himself offstage again. We follow him as he glides through the lobby, leaps triumphantly across the crowded auditorium and onto the stage to begin the concert.

As always, Barantini pulls off some magical camera moves (the same ones that made him compare him during his teens to Russian camera magician Sergei Urusevsky). Passing seamlessly from handheld operators to drones and back again, the camera miraculously floats through enclosed interior spaces and out into the wide-open sky. The city streets and theater make this look a bit like Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Birdman” (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), which also may have influenced Barantini a bit. The team of camera operators and crew remain unseen (although I think I glimpsed one on the subway); The production assistants who are supposed to get people to sign release forms are similarly reticent.

There are, of course, some moments when spontaneity seems questionable. Initially, Sheeran tried to hail a taxi, missed it, and then hailed another vehicle that stopped for him; This cab driver allows the camera into his car without commenting on it. Hmm. Then there’s an absolutely outrageous scene when Ed bumps into his girlfriend Camila Cabello while driving her car. “What are you doing in New York?” She gasps, a moment that won’t get her any acting nominations. Ed explains and asks for a lift which Cabello offers him, and they have a little James Corden-style karaoke before she takes him down. What a bit of luck to find it! But Sheeran works his way through it all, without fail.