Bringing Out the Dead

Scorsese and the Stones re-tread lightly in new concert doc.

by Shaun Brady

GIMME SWELTER: The band's act in Shine a Light lacks the raw heat of earlier days. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

When he directed The Last Waltz in 1978, Martin Scorsese was a young filmmaker at the top of his game, avatar of a new breed of cinematic artists raised on rock 'n' roll and the entirety of film history. It seemed fated when he hooked up with Robbie Robertson, the same age and closing a run of remarkable songwriting as the leader of The Band — which drew upon the legacy of American music, both elaborating those styles and grounding them in modern reality, in much the same way as Scorsese channeled Hollywood genres.

Thirty years later, Oscar in hand, Scorsese is a polished elder statesman; even at their most electric, as with The Departed, his new films reference nothing so much as his own past triumphs. He's again found his perfect musical parallel in the Rolling Stones circa 2006, a band that long ago traded raw energy for a professional simulacrum of same.

There's nothing wrong with the pair of Stones performances, recorded in late '06 at the Beacon Theater in NYC. But the quartet of sixtysomethings on stage have their own bookend to contend with, in the form of the infamous 1970 Maysles Brothers doc Gimme Shelter. That film epitomized the danger of rock 'n' roll, made manifest by the killing of an audience member by a Hell's Angel hired to guard the stage. The Stones, watching the playback of that footage in the film, were visibly confronted with the difference between the play-acted threat of their sequin-clad selves onstage and how that threat came to life in their audience.

On the few occasions when Scorsese's fleet of cameras turns toward the audience in Shine a Light, a very different scene plays out. Where young girls in the '70s seemed compelled to throw themselves at Mick Jagger, draw by his siren song of bluesy swagger and sexual posturing, their daughters (or granddaughters) now clap merrily along at Mick's bump-and-grind. Jagger can still make astounding use of his body at 63, but his act seems like a wax statue of classic rock sexuality, as harmless as a saber-toothed tiger in a museum display.

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Those earlier days peek through in the vintage interview clips that cut into the show from time to time. Where The Last Waltz used contemporary interviews with members of The Band to sum up the wearying rigors of a life on the road just ending, Shine a Light calls up moments from the past, largely seen in the ironic reflection of the senior citizens now onstage. After all, how wasted a life could all those drug busts and wretched excesses have been given the in-shape grandfathers currently providing a very respectable run through "Jumpin' Jack Flash"? Of course, Brian Jones' name has been carefully excised to fit that narrative, but that all seems so long ago now, doesn't it?

The clips Scorsese chooses are largely on the topics of celebrity and/or longevity, tracing the band's attitudes from youthful naivete through stoned bemusement, boredom and contempt toward their interrogators. Keith in particular displays his animus for discussing the minutiae of his lifestyle, and the portraits of him and Mick both on- and offstage draw a distinction between love of the music and love of the spotlight. It's only during Richards' two numbers when Scorsese cuts directly into the performance, but they're also the only times when a lovely raggedness befitting the Stones' barroom origins actually tears through the glossy arena-rock scrim. But Keith poses as much as Mick, the eccentric wastrel act such a cartoon that even a pirate-movie cameo seems redundant. His famed indulgences haven't killed him, so by this time taking tumbles out of coconut trees and snorting his own father's ashes merely make Keith seem even more the world's cuddliest junkie.

Their director has long since assumed his own caricature, and the manically obsessive, over-caffeinated artiste rears his head in the film's opening montage, dueling with Jagger over a late-arriving set list, all played for chuckles. If Last Waltz were a meeting of two geniuses whose grasp somehow tended to just keep up with their reach, then Shine a Light is a gathering of relaxed visionaries perhaps too accommodated to having their every ambition realized.

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

Shine a Light

Directed by Martin Scorsese

A Paramount release