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NEIL YOUNG: HEART OF GOLD (2006)
Conventional wisdom be damned, Jonathan Demme’s Neil Young: Heart of Gold is superior to his celebrated Stop Making Sense, its marriage of style and substance so subtle and affecting that it stands as a pinnacle of the concert-doc form. The focus is an August 2005 Young show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in support of Prairie Wind, an album written while the musician was anticipating brain aneurysm surgery, and a haunting, lingering sense of mortality hangs over the proceedings, which features a setlist divided pretty evenly between old and new material. Young is in superb shape here, whether performing on stage alone or accompanied by others (a choir, Emmylou Harris). It’s Demme’s direction, however, that elevates the endeavor to borderline-greatness, his alternation between intimate close-ups and expansive shots of the stage and theater (all beautifully handled by cinematographer Ellen Kuras) reflecting a balance between pessimistic loneliness and heartening, communal optimism that’s echoed in Young’s songs, which range from selections typical (“Old Man,” the titular track) to lesser-known (“It’s a Dream”). Refusing to chop up his footage with unnecessary edits, Demme lets the man play, to the film’s – and our – immense benefit.
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