Shine A Light (12A.)
Directed by Martin Scorsese.
Featuring Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, Charlie Watts, Jack White, Buddy Guy. 122 mins
This concert movie features three testosterone pumped talents that have long since passed their peak – Scorsese, Bill Clinton (whose foundation is hosting the event) and the Rolling Stones. Two of them still have enough about them to remind you why they once mattered. As for the third, all you can say is why couldn’t Mick or Keef have fallen in love with Yoko Ono? Tonight, Live in Concert – The Charlatans.
Of all the bands not to die out before they got old, why did it have to be them? Nobody does Travesty of their Former Selves quite like the Stones. The problem is not simply that they are old (the twistedly uneven aging effects of sustained debauchery means these sixty year olds leap around like kids wearing Halloween masks) it’s that their whole appeal is based on a adolescent swagger.
Shine a Light is being touted as a documentary but, aside from a few archive clips, it really is just a concert movie. Critics were shown the film on the BFI’s massive Imax screen and I’d say that Marty does a better job capturing the concert experience than the makers of U23D – if there was any excitement left in a Stones concert he’d have found it. The sound is disconcertingly good – I kept involuntarily looking round to see who it was clapping behind me.
The movie starts well enough with a sequence that is a Martin Scorsese film about Martin Scorsese trying to film a small scale Rolling Stones theatre gig. This early behind the scenes section is shot on a ratio that barely fills half the screen but the moment the music strikes up the image explodes to fill the entire Imax wall. It’s a magic moment - until you realise that they are about to massacre Jumping Jack Flash.
At one point Christine Aguilera is wheeled out as a kind of youthful sacrifice but it is the other two guest performers that produce the film’s most telling moment. Early on a puppy dog youthful Jack White comes on to duet with Jagger and suddenly Mick stops prancing around and just stands and sings and he’s tremendous. A great voice and just briefly you remember why he was once something special. Later though Blues man Buddy Guy comes on for one song and is so charismatic and forceful and talented that he blows them away to an extent that is embarrassing.
I can understand why people would still pay money to see the Stones in concert just to say they’d seen them live, but why would anyone pay money to see a concert film of the geriatric Stones? Or, more to the point, why would Scorsese want to spend time on making a concert film of the geriatric Stones? This is like a version of Raging Bull where the whole film is the aging fat Jake La Motta doing his stand up with just a few brief flashbacks to him being interviewed during his boxing days. That's how far Shine a Light misses the point.
Directed by Martin Scorsese.
Featuring Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, Charlie Watts, Jack White, Buddy Guy. 122 mins
This concert movie features three testosterone pumped talents that have long since passed their peak – Scorsese, Bill Clinton (whose foundation is hosting the event) and the Rolling Stones. Two of them still have enough about them to remind you why they once mattered. As for the third, all you can say is why couldn’t Mick or Keef have fallen in love with Yoko Ono? Tonight, Live in Concert – The Charlatans.
Of all the bands not to die out before they got old, why did it have to be them? Nobody does Travesty of their Former Selves quite like the Stones. The problem is not simply that they are old (the twistedly uneven aging effects of sustained debauchery means these sixty year olds leap around like kids wearing Halloween masks) it’s that their whole appeal is based on a adolescent swagger.
Shine a Light is being touted as a documentary but, aside from a few archive clips, it really is just a concert movie. Critics were shown the film on the BFI’s massive Imax screen and I’d say that Marty does a better job capturing the concert experience than the makers of U23D – if there was any excitement left in a Stones concert he’d have found it. The sound is disconcertingly good – I kept involuntarily looking round to see who it was clapping behind me.
The movie starts well enough with a sequence that is a Martin Scorsese film about Martin Scorsese trying to film a small scale Rolling Stones theatre gig. This early behind the scenes section is shot on a ratio that barely fills half the screen but the moment the music strikes up the image explodes to fill the entire Imax wall. It’s a magic moment - until you realise that they are about to massacre Jumping Jack Flash.
At one point Christine Aguilera is wheeled out as a kind of youthful sacrifice but it is the other two guest performers that produce the film’s most telling moment. Early on a puppy dog youthful Jack White comes on to duet with Jagger and suddenly Mick stops prancing around and just stands and sings and he’s tremendous. A great voice and just briefly you remember why he was once something special. Later though Blues man Buddy Guy comes on for one song and is so charismatic and forceful and talented that he blows them away to an extent that is embarrassing.
I can understand why people would still pay money to see the Stones in concert just to say they’d seen them live, but why would anyone pay money to see a concert film of the geriatric Stones? Or, more to the point, why would Scorsese want to spend time on making a concert film of the geriatric Stones? This is like a version of Raging Bull where the whole film is the aging fat Jake La Motta doing his stand up with just a few brief flashbacks to him being interviewed during his boxing days. That's how far Shine a Light misses the point.
