You want a concert film to sound great, and most of them do. But I don’t think I’ve ever come across a concert film that casts as powerful a spell as “Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall” did. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and premiering at the New York Film Festival this evening, the film is a recording of Cameron Winter’s solo performance in front of a packed Carnegie Hall on December 11, 2025. The movie is only 75 minutes long and consists entirely of Winter sitting at his Steinway grand piano singing gorgeous meditative trance melodies, but I swear there’s one song you’ve never heard before. sound quite like that.
The gently rolling piano echoes in the corridor like a rhapsody coming from the depths. The sound is rich, bright, bottom heavy, big. And that voice! Winter sings in a low baritone (and sometimes a high baritone) of surprising power; the notes hang in a suspended tremor, hypnotically bold. He will remind you of so many other singers at different moments. At times he’s a low-octave Thom Yorke, the midnight euphoria lost in the fog is like Tom Waits minus the gravel, and there are strong echoes of early Springsteen in his soaring sonic caress and expansive resonance—the mournful troubadour of “The Incident on 57th Street.” The concert may sometimes remind you of John Cale’s wonderful 1992 live album “Fragments of a Rainy Season.” But the artist that Cameron Winter magically evokes in “Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall” is Bob Dylan; Dylan, who lets the words flow through him like a blissful flood and sings them like he’s possessed. Like Dylan, Winter isn’t just about singing. He creates pop songs that become a spell, a rhapsody, a prayer.
At the beginning of the concert, Winter, a very tall man, wearing a black shirt and pants, with shaggy, greasy, messy indie hair (his thick eyebrows and mournful facial expression suggest a serious version of Nicolas Cage in “Leaving Las Vegas”), strides towards the stage and stands in front of the piano, introducing himself with what appears to be a slight bow, but he’s so taciturn it could just be a hipster slouch. Winter, of course, is the frontman of then-indie band Geese, who live somewhere between Wilco and Arcade Fire on the tuned/distuned scale. Geese are good, but they are over-praised. Winter’s 2024 solo album “Heavy Metal” is much more interesting; The noise gives the sound of the meditating soul within the rocker. “Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall” is a showcase of Cameron Winter, a feast of sorrow and faith.
The piano stands at a slight angle on the bare Carnegie stage, but essentially Winter has his back to the audience. This is not a hostile gesture; It’s an indication of how much he wants to dominate the music. But one film It’s something completely different, and Paul Thomas Anderson, directing his second musical performance film (after “Junun”, a minor 2015 film in which Jonny Greenwood travels to India), has created a visually stunning film that is never flashy or grandiose. It frames the piano on stage from different angles, bringing us closer to Cameron Winter and into her emotional orbit. There are shots of the audience from the stage (Carnegie Hall’s four balconies separated by three rows of lights), and the entire film is bathed in an orange-yellow glow, as if the entire Carnegie Hall were illuminated by candlelight. It’s paired with Winter’s music, which is all about mystery and heartbreak, with a classic sunset church vibe and a beauty that makes her sing inseparable from joy.
I can sit here and pretend I know what Cameron Winter’s lyrics mean, but the truth is that they’re the kind of dirty poetry that’s often undervalued by over-analysis. The meaning lies in how he says them; His passion rings like a deep, dark bell, tones of blame and awe drifting throughout the performance. It grabs you with the opening number, “They All Fell Into the River” (which I also wrote). to think about the catharsis of tears), carries you through “If You Turn Back Now” (an inquisitive relationship drama about the devil), makes you feel the emasculated scorn of “$0” but also the stirring revelation that “God is actually real,” and ends with a performance of “Take It With You” (“I found a souvenir of you by the window in the kitchen, baby, / Take it with you when you go”). Dylan’s hard-boiled romanticism at its most glorious.
Cameron Winter’s solo songs are often beautiful, but most move at the same slow tempo and lack the verse-chorus tradition. “Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall” feels like a song in slow motion loopIt’s like Leonard Cohen’s first album. If it weren’t for her voice, a miraculous instrument, the film might have been a bit dreary: low operatic indie. He’s so wrapped up in the music he sings in “Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall” that you hope he’ll never be found.