The Last Waltz, Martin Scorcese’s rockumentary about The Band’s final concert, has been reappraised as one of the most iconic rock films of all time. No Direction Home, his documentary on Bob Dylan, provided insight into one of the most elusive of icons, and coincided with a moment when his mercurial public image and almost obsessive evasion of cultural bandwagons were a powerful counterpoint to shallow celebrity and zero watt talent.
What, then, is the point of Shine a Light, Scorsese’s record of a Rolling Stones’ gig at New York’s Beacon Theatre? Does it mark a moment of musical history? No. The concert itself, though actually filmed across two live events, was to mark Bill Clinton’s sixtieth birthday. Clinton himself introduces the band, but if that is a defining moment in rock ‘n’ roll history, it is its funeral.
Does it capture a band at their peak? Obviously not. The music itself is good, but not great. Is it a documentary about the history of The Rolling Stones? No. The film consists almost entirely of concert footage peppered with occasional archive interviews. The barest of backstory is skipped through with little purpose. If you didn’t know that Mick Jagger was once arrested for possessing weed, then you probably wouldn’t be seeing the film anyway.
Is it a directorial tour de force? No. Scorsese arrives on screen to bookend the film but so light is his touch that if it were not for this physical proof of his presence, it would be easy to wonder whether he was there at all. That doesn’t mean he does a bad job – one of the faults with The Last Waltz is that it is ‘too directed’, approaching the show as theatre rather than concert. Here Scorsese limits himself to getting the camera down among the (suspiciously beautiful) crowd to adopt the appropriately reverential angle on his subjects, aided by the occasional close-up.
If Shine a Light has a theme, it is simply about a great band who decided to just keep on going. The interviews repeatedly return to the topic of age and how long the Stones will last. That age is evidenced by crackling voices, crinkling faces, and self-deprecatory humour. All of this makes their energy and commitment something heroic and beautiful; well worthy of cinema. But that story, those images, are like the band itself: well worn. The very thing the film fails to do is shine any light.
