George Michael: The Faith Tour – A Beautiful Reminder of What We've Lost
There's something rather magical about watching a concert filmed nearly four decades ago and realising that, for all our technological advancements, we might actually have lost something rather wonderful along the way.
George Michael: The Faith Tour is a glorious time capsule, a celebration of extraordinary human talent, and a reminder of what happens when thousands of people put aside their differences and simply lose themselves in music.
Filmed across two nights in Paris during his 1988 Faith Tour, this is George Michael at a remarkable moment in his career. Young, charismatic, supremely talented and commanding the stage with the kind of effortless confidence that can't be manufactured, downloaded or generated by an algorithm.
The film opens with a beautifully considered introduction, providing context for younger viewers while gently reigniting memories for those of us who remember the era. It's a thoughtful touch, establishing the significance of what we're about to experience without overstaying its welcome.
One of the absolute delights of this film is the production itself. As someone who appreciates the technical wizardry behind a great live show, I found the lighting particularly wonderful walk down memory lane. The then-highly advanced Vari-Lite moving-head fixtures, lasers and an absolute army of PAR64 lamps create a spectacular visual environment. Beams cut through the darkness, colours wash across the stage, and everything feels deliberately designed to complement the performance rather than compete with it.
There's a beautiful simplicity to it all, although calling the technology "simple" would be rather insulting to the lighting designers and technicians of the day. The concert offered a intimate focus, no enormous LED screens demanding our attention. No relentless visual bombardment. No desperate attempts to turn every second into a shareable moment from every angle. Just clever design, thoughtful production and an artist who knows exactly what to do with a stage.
What an extraordinary performer George Michael was. That voice, the charisma, the musicality, and perhaps most importantly, the connection with his audience. There's a warmth and confidence to the performance that makes it feel wonderfully natural.
He doesn't need to manufacture a moment. He's simply there, doing what great artists do. Creating something special and sharing it with people and those people give that energy straight back in a beautifully uplifting symbiotic relationship.
One of the most striking things about watching this concert in 2026 has remarkably little to do with George Michael himself. Nobody is holding up a phone. No sea of glowing screens. No influencers filming themselves pretending to have the time of their lives. No audience members watching an entire concert through a tiny rectangle so they can prove to strangers on the internet that they were there.
Just people. Dancing. Singing. Smiling. Connecting. Actually living in the moment.
Remember when we used to hold our lighters in the air at concerts?
Thousands of tiny flames flickering together in a spontaneous, communal expression of appreciation. Nobody needed to organise it, monetise it or invent a hashtag. It was simply something we did. A beautiful, intuitive little act of collective humanity. Watching it again is surprisingly moving.
Of course, nostalgia can be a seductive beast. The past wasn't perfect, and modern concerts can still be extraordinary experiences. But there's something undeniably special about seeing an audience so completely immersed in what's happening in front of them, without the constant temptation to document it.
And wonderfully, that sense of connection didn't remain trapped in the footage. It spilled straight into our cinema.
Now, film critics aren't necessarily renowned for being the most demonstrative of audiences. We can be a rather jaded bunch, professionally trained to sit in darkness, analyse everything and occasionally express enthusiasm through the radical act of raising an eyebrow. But like a wave through the cinema, there was singing. Toe tapping. Heads bobbing. People visibly enjoying themselves and it was delightful.
For a moment, the cinema stopped feeling like a room full of people passively watching something and somehow morphed into a room full of people participating, experiencing and remembering something special.
It was a shared experience. Which, when you think about it, is rather the point of both cinema and live music. We gather in a space, surrender a little of our individual worlds and allow somebody else's creativity to bring us together. That's a beautiful thing.
What makes The Faith Tour so compelling is that it doesn't need to manufacture emotional significance. It's already there, in the performance, the audience, the music and the unmistakable atmosphere of a particular moment in time.
And while the fashions, hairstyles (and lighting) might firmly belong to another era, the music feels as relevant and alive as ever. Great art has a habit of doing that.
There's also something particularly poignant about experiencing this film in 2026, when artificial intelligence is increasingly capable of producing imitations of human creativity.
Here we have a reminder of the extraordinary beauty of the real thing. A real voice. Real musicians. A real audience. Real people responding to one another in real time.
No prompts. No algorithms deciding what might maximise engagement. No synthetic perfection. Just human beings creating something wonderful together.
Perhaps that's what I loved most about this film.
It captures something that happened once, in a particular place, between particular people, and can never happen in precisely the same way again.
Yet here we are, almost four decades later, experiencing some of that magic together in a cinema.
George Michael: The Faith Tour is certainly a celebration of George Michael, but it's also a celebration of music, performance, community and the extraordinary things humans can create when talent, technology and emotion come together.
It's a beautifully preserved moment in time, bursting with life, joy and an infectious energy that refuses to fade.
I left the cinema smiling, humming and feeling a little more connected to the people around me. And in a world increasingly determined to keep us staring at our own little screens, that's something worth celebrating.
Turn up the volume. Put the phone away. And remember what it feels like to simply be there.
