Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Gaga Chromatica Ball’ on Max, A Concert Film Packed With Lady Gaga Bangers (And A Tree Piano)

Gaga Chromatica Ball, now streaming on Max, features Lady Gaga in a 2022 concert at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, during the pandemic-delayed tour in support of her 2020 album Chromatica. A lot’s happened since 2022, and these days Gaga is gearing up for her star turn as Harley Quinn in Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux. But in this conceptual, inspirational, and just plain monumental concert film, which she produced, directed, and edited, Lady Gaga presents an immersive document of her remarkable facility for live performance, a classic thing that never goes out of style. In Chromatica Ball, Gaga is part pop star, part rock star, part advocate, and part futuristic fashionista, with Acts instead of Eras. Or as she offers during an early reminder of the jams that made her great in the first place, “Walk walk fashion baby, work it, move, that bitch crazy…”        

GAGA CHROMATICA BALL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: Chromatica Ball was Gaga’s seventh major tour. But its magnitude only grew in the wake of the pandemic, when the planned run of stadium shows ballooned from six to 20. During lockdown her fans, those legions of Little Monsters, had to listen to huge Chromatica singles like “Stupid Love,” “Rain on Me,” and “Free Woman” while cooped up. So why not give them the gift of enormity and spectacle? And so the lights go down at Dodger Stadium, and Lady Gaga appears as a monolithic figure out of Brutalist propaganda, with a fleet of dancers attired similarly in gray monochrome and a stark stage setup with cubby holes for a drummer and a musician whose equipment includes a circular keyboard. A total pro, she opens the over 20-song show with “Bad Romance,” “Just Dance,” and “Poker Face” before establishing its format of four acts and a big finale.

The production design for Chromatica Ball is deliberate, purposely disruptive of the traditional spacing for a live concert, and accompanied by video interludes with elaborate costuming and imagery of their own, an aspect accentuated in Gaga Chromatica Ball with tweaks of the film stock and perceptive edits. But the visual style on display, coupled with frequent costume changes, are in partnership with a series of ecstatic wide shots of the crowd. Those more traditional modes of a concert film are perfectly necessary, because the fans’ reaction is what the arena-ready chorus of something like “Just Dance” is built for.

For “Alice,” Gaga performs strapped to a cement gurney. For the Act II standout “911,” she appears in a peaked black watch cap alongside fields of stark red on the towering video screens that flank her. And for “Free Woman,” she sings directly to the Monsters cheering along the stage thrust. For as huge as the spectacle of Chromatica Ball can get, it never obscures Lady Gaga. (Well, except for when her dancers cleverly mask the on-stage costume changes.) She is always at its center, always as Gaga the singer and performer, and she is utterly magnetic. There are a lot of reasons why she’s been a star for almost two decades. But it’s a fact that she can make a stadium with over 55,000 feel like an intimate, direct experience, and transmit that feeling through the small screen with Gaga Chromatica Ball. And by concert’s end, she’s in sequins and vinyl, her slicked back blonde hair now sweaty and askew, flanked by two heavy metal guitarists and ringed in flame. It’s a rock star moment for an artist who is a master of being both a chameleon and a captivating performer.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The raw and riveting 2017 documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two is still streaming on Netflix, and well worth a watch or rewatch. And while that doc and the controversy around an old interview still, in 2024, continues to feed rumors of acrimony between Gaga and Madonna, the conceptual swings in Chromatica Ball are equal in scale to those of Madame X, the 2021 concert film Madonna shot in Lisbon, Portugal.      

Performance Worth Watching: It’s gotta be the tree piano. With its tangle of 3D-sculpted roots, and the addition of vent tubing and strange bits of metal, the instrument that dominates the smaller stage square separate from the main event often seems to meld with Lady Gaga as she sits on its bench, which in turn resembles human bones. The effect is only heightened once Gaga reveals another costume change, from glimmering gold to a leotard with attached tentacles. It’s an effect that conjures concepts of HR Giger-style body horror, and it’s super fucking cool.  

Memorable Dialogue: Chromatica Ball is peppered with the usual rock star exhortations. (“Put your hands up! Now screeeeeeam!”) But Lady Gaga doesn’t do a whole lot of talking until she takes to a separate, smaller stage for a stirring rendition of “Born This Way.” Playing the majority of the song on solo piano, Gaga frequently interjects with inspiring messages in support of LGBTQ+ people. “Did you hear what I said? I said ‘perfect!’ Perfect with a capital ‘P!’” It’s an emotional, celebrational centerpiece of the set, but she isn’t finished. “Hold up. Everybody just hold your head up real quick. I don’t always feel perfect. Most of the time I don’t. Most of the time I feel like something’s wrong. But when that happens, I deep, deep down inside tell myself or someone else” – and she shouts the lines in unison with a full-throated chorus of 52,344 Little Monsters. “I’M BEAUTIFUL IN MY WAY/GOD MAKES NO MISTAKES/ I’M ON THE RIGHT TRACK BABY/I WAS BORN THIS WAY…”     

Sex and Skin: Sex and Skin? More like Clothes and Concepts. There are at least five full costume changes in Chromatica Ball, with each one integrated into the visual aesthetic of the act in which it appears. Gaga as gesticulating political sculpture. Gaga in a blood red cape that echoes her meat dress from 2010. Gaga doffing that in favor of cool shades and a red cowl with gigot sleeves. Gaga in a black taskmaster outfit complete with chest straps, conical shoulder attachments, and a peaked cap. Gaga in a celestial headpiece that glimmers in gold. In Chromatica, feel free to choose your Gaga. She’s gonna give you options.    

Our Take: Sometimes, when that career migration begins for A-list talent, it leaves you wondering if you can’t just go back. Sure, Lady Gaga never stopped proving herself. She transitioned into movies, made one called A Star is Born, and grabbed a Best Actress nom for it. No big deal! But one of the effects of Gaga Chromatica Ball is to refresh our understanding of how great she is at the whole singing, songwriting, and performing thing. It draws on her penchant for reinvention – indeed, she reinvents herself in part for each of the show’s specific acts. But this is a film that captures a concert, and the concert features an artist who needs no artifice to be awesome. The singlong choruses and stadium-sized moments are key to the production. But when Gaga repairs to the side stage for a set she leads, often solo at that tree piano, she has the ability to miniaturize the room. It feels like she’s singing the Star is Born ballads “Shallow” and “Always Remember Us This Way” to one person at a time, or inspiring the individual who needed it most with a stirring interpretation of the anthem “Born This Way.” And when she gets to “The Edge of Glory,” playing piano one handed while pointing with the other, we’re all hanging on that moment of truth. Lady Gaga’s multidisciplinary career is terrific. She’s always hungry, so let her cook. But in Chromatica Ball, she shares every last ingredient that ever made her a master.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Gaga Chromatica Ball is a thrilling, maximalist concert film that activates its spectacle through the sheer force of Lady Gaga as a live performer. Thematic setpieces, creative film editing touches, and an ambitious rate of costume changes are all in support of how great Gaga is as a singer and the front person for her entire aesthetic.  

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.