"We cannot burn Mick Jagger. Very simple." My main problem with concert films is that film, being an inherently visual medium, means that you assume what you're going to be presented with something that needs to be SEEN as well as heard, as opposed to other cultural mediums like music or painting, and invariably, most concert documentaries are simply that: concert, and most concerts are just some folks standing on a stage playing music. Occasionally you'll get someone with a strong visually sensibility, but mostly, it's just dudes (and sometimes chicks) onstage.
For a concert documentary to work for me, there has to be some outside, extenuating circumstances, something that raises its visibility higher than 'just another concert movie'. One that succeeded was the Maysles Brothers' document on the Rolling Stones ill-fated free Altamont concert, Gimme Shelter, because it had very little to do with the music. The film looked at the struggle to put the concert on, the disastrous idea to make Hell's Angels concert security, and the fact that a drugged-up black man with a girl's name got stabbed to death in the crowd. That sort of thing made it more than just another concert movie. Shine a Light, despite the presence of Martin Scorsese and a LOT of cameras that are moving and shifting unceasingly, is just another concert movie.
Scorsese as music director, has done it twice, once with the "just a concert movie" Last Waltz, which is mostly performance, and mostly blah, and the engrossing and captivating No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, which is no performance, and all awesome. This has HD and a lot of swooping cameras, but better The Last Waltz it does not.
The music, as expected, is great. It may not succeed as a film, but the music is as great as you could hope. Special guests Jack White, Christina Aguilera and especially the always and absolute boss Buddy Guy (who looks amusingly stoned) are nice diversions, but the Stones own the stage like few bands before or after them, and they have a cohesive, almost telepathic unity on stage. Compare the sound here to the sound of them in their commercial prime, Get Your Ya-Yas Out, and you'll hear the difference. They have lived these notes for nearly half a century, and they know every fiber of it, although they clean up their lines a bit too much for me, to the point that it felt a bit like they were putting on a happy face for the nice folks, for the big people, which seems a bit disappointing.
There is occasionally breaks in the action for historical, archival footage chronicling the Stones at different points in their career, but most of it is superfluous at best, mostly clips of the band putting a timeframe on live performance, serving as a trite yuk-yuk counterpoint to the fact that they're old men and still playing. The only time the film really came together for me and involved me, just as in Woodstock, was the construction, the pre-planning, the madness beforehand. The group standing around and chatting, meeting the Clintons, Scorses and his team freaking out, putting stuff together, and providing the quote that heads this review.
All in all, after the opening salvo, it's pretty much exactly what every other concert movie is good for: putting on and playing really loud while you're cleaning your house, because it'll give you the energy you won't get from a regular studio recording. But "background noise while you scrub the bathroom" is not much of a compliment for a film, and being put on trial for what it really is, it gets the score it deserves.
{Grade: 6.25/10 (HI-C+) / #2 (of 3) documentaries of 2008}
For a concert documentary to work for me, there has to be some outside, extenuating circumstances, something that raises its visibility higher than 'just another concert movie'. One that succeeded was the Maysles Brothers' document on the Rolling Stones ill-fated free Altamont concert, Gimme Shelter, because it had very little to do with the music. The film looked at the struggle to put the concert on, the disastrous idea to make Hell's Angels concert security, and the fact that a drugged-up black man with a girl's name got stabbed to death in the crowd. That sort of thing made it more than just another concert movie. Shine a Light, despite the presence of Martin Scorsese and a LOT of cameras that are moving and shifting unceasingly, is just another concert movie.
Scorsese as music director, has done it twice, once with the "just a concert movie" Last Waltz, which is mostly performance, and mostly blah, and the engrossing and captivating No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, which is no performance, and all awesome. This has HD and a lot of swooping cameras, but better The Last Waltz it does not.
The music, as expected, is great. It may not succeed as a film, but the music is as great as you could hope. Special guests Jack White, Christina Aguilera and especially the always and absolute boss Buddy Guy (who looks amusingly stoned) are nice diversions, but the Stones own the stage like few bands before or after them, and they have a cohesive, almost telepathic unity on stage. Compare the sound here to the sound of them in their commercial prime, Get Your Ya-Yas Out, and you'll hear the difference. They have lived these notes for nearly half a century, and they know every fiber of it, although they clean up their lines a bit too much for me, to the point that it felt a bit like they were putting on a happy face for the nice folks, for the big people, which seems a bit disappointing.
There is occasionally breaks in the action for historical, archival footage chronicling the Stones at different points in their career, but most of it is superfluous at best, mostly clips of the band putting a timeframe on live performance, serving as a trite yuk-yuk counterpoint to the fact that they're old men and still playing. The only time the film really came together for me and involved me, just as in Woodstock, was the construction, the pre-planning, the madness beforehand. The group standing around and chatting, meeting the Clintons, Scorses and his team freaking out, putting stuff together, and providing the quote that heads this review.
All in all, after the opening salvo, it's pretty much exactly what every other concert movie is good for: putting on and playing really loud while you're cleaning your house, because it'll give you the energy you won't get from a regular studio recording. But "background noise while you scrub the bathroom" is not much of a compliment for a film, and being put on trial for what it really is, it gets the score it deserves.
{Grade: 6.25/10 (HI-C+) / #2 (of 3) documentaries of 2008}