I saw the film with my wife last week in Vancouver. The theatre (Fifth Avenue Cinemas) is a small group of theatres with nice seats and great sound usually reserved for indie films. When I first sat down during the Saturday Matinée, I noticed a couple of elderly grannies beside me with silver white perms. I said to my wife that they must be in their eighties and I wondered why they would be here taking in a Neil Young movie. My wife said they were only in their seventies. And then a family came in with their two girls who were both under ten years old. By the time the theatre filled, I noticed that there were people from every generation, although most were in their mid-forties to mid-fifties.
One of my first thoughts I had when the movie started was how hold Neil was looking. Everyone on the stage was looking rather ancient, except for Emilylou Harris, who is as ageless as a goddess and twice as beautiful. But once the music started, all the crows feet and turkey chins became secondary. Although I'm more of a fan of Neil's eclectic guitar work with Crazy Horse, and can't get enough of songs like "Change Your Mind" and "Big Time" and of course "Cortez" and all the other classics, I can easily warm up to some of his acoustic work. This film was all acoustic and mesmerizing in its stark beauty. Although very little of Neil's music is instantly accessible--I don't think I've ever liked a Neil Young album when it first came out--simultaneously watching and listening to how Neil and his band of musicians played revealed how much focus and power each moment had. Those awkward moments that I initially experienced while listening to the album before I attended the film, where some of the lyrics come across as being overly simplistic (such as when Neil, like countless other songwriters, rhymes "night" with "light"), during the movie became ripe with profound meaning. Deceptively simple phrases such as, "If you follow every dream, you might get lost," and "A dream, it's only a dream, and it's fading now," became powerful metaphors for the disillusionment and loss of ideals that are associated with getting old. But accompanying this disillusionment was also a sense of the real, of something that goes beyond ideals and philosophical constructs and touches on the actual essence of being and existence. I haven't heard so much peeling away to the core since John Lennon sang "Dream is Over" right after the Beatles breakup.
Another thing that truly struck me was the tremendous amount of restraint in all the musicians. Each note that was plucked, each word that was sung by Neil, Peggy, Emilylou Harris and the rest of the singers, was done with such focused attentiveness that they made it look easy. I remember hearing about Neil once tying up one of the arms of his drummer (I believe it was the late Kenny Buttry) to try to get him to play "less." With Neil, it's all about what's under the surface. It's all about the power of the subtle. Anyone who is familiar with Neil's electric guitar work will know that Neil can say more with a single note than most guitarists can say with ten.
In all, the film was like a glorious and serene meditation. I came out of it with the same feeling I used to get when I went to church as a kid but lost as an adult. I got the same feeling as I once did when I listened to Mahilia Jackson while driving through the desert. There is gold in Neil Young's music, and Jonathan Demme did a wonderful job of letting that gold manifest visibly.
If you have ever been sucked in by the undercurrent of Neil's music, then this film is worth its weight in, well, gold. Not one audience member left until the final credit rolled and the "Shaky Pictures" logo appeared accompanied by a strangely discordant note (typically Neil). Only then did the entire audience stand up and enthusiastically applaud the film. I haven't experienced a movie being applauded like this since I saw Neil's other great concert film, "Rust Never Sleeps" many years ago.
Highly recommended.
One of my first thoughts I had when the movie started was how hold Neil was looking. Everyone on the stage was looking rather ancient, except for Emilylou Harris, who is as ageless as a goddess and twice as beautiful. But once the music started, all the crows feet and turkey chins became secondary. Although I'm more of a fan of Neil's eclectic guitar work with Crazy Horse, and can't get enough of songs like "Change Your Mind" and "Big Time" and of course "Cortez" and all the other classics, I can easily warm up to some of his acoustic work. This film was all acoustic and mesmerizing in its stark beauty. Although very little of Neil's music is instantly accessible--I don't think I've ever liked a Neil Young album when it first came out--simultaneously watching and listening to how Neil and his band of musicians played revealed how much focus and power each moment had. Those awkward moments that I initially experienced while listening to the album before I attended the film, where some of the lyrics come across as being overly simplistic (such as when Neil, like countless other songwriters, rhymes "night" with "light"), during the movie became ripe with profound meaning. Deceptively simple phrases such as, "If you follow every dream, you might get lost," and "A dream, it's only a dream, and it's fading now," became powerful metaphors for the disillusionment and loss of ideals that are associated with getting old. But accompanying this disillusionment was also a sense of the real, of something that goes beyond ideals and philosophical constructs and touches on the actual essence of being and existence. I haven't heard so much peeling away to the core since John Lennon sang "Dream is Over" right after the Beatles breakup.
Another thing that truly struck me was the tremendous amount of restraint in all the musicians. Each note that was plucked, each word that was sung by Neil, Peggy, Emilylou Harris and the rest of the singers, was done with such focused attentiveness that they made it look easy. I remember hearing about Neil once tying up one of the arms of his drummer (I believe it was the late Kenny Buttry) to try to get him to play "less." With Neil, it's all about what's under the surface. It's all about the power of the subtle. Anyone who is familiar with Neil's electric guitar work will know that Neil can say more with a single note than most guitarists can say with ten.
In all, the film was like a glorious and serene meditation. I came out of it with the same feeling I used to get when I went to church as a kid but lost as an adult. I got the same feeling as I once did when I listened to Mahilia Jackson while driving through the desert. There is gold in Neil Young's music, and Jonathan Demme did a wonderful job of letting that gold manifest visibly.
If you have ever been sucked in by the undercurrent of Neil's music, then this film is worth its weight in, well, gold. Not one audience member left until the final credit rolled and the "Shaky Pictures" logo appeared accompanied by a strangely discordant note (typically Neil). Only then did the entire audience stand up and enthusiastically applaud the film. I haven't experienced a movie being applauded like this since I saw Neil's other great concert film, "Rust Never Sleeps" many years ago.
Highly recommended.