Shine A Light is Martin Scorsese's documentary of The Rolling Stones' performance at the Beacon Theater in New York City. Performing their most popular songs, along with a few lesser known ones, The Rolling Stones look seasoned but never show signs of age. As far as insight goes, this documentary is rather bleak. But as far as amusement goes, it is exhilarating, electrifying, and a milestone in entertainment.
Mick Jagger is sensational on stage, using the entire stage to his advantage. Never once does he look exhausted, never once is he out of breath, and never once does he fail to entertain as he puts his heart into singing. Although, the first couple of songs sound a bit scratchy and, lets face it, Keith Richards' skin looks like a leather wallet. but after some warming up The Stones are back in business like old times.
The only problem with Shine A Light is it feels like a two-hour concert rather than a documentary full of facts and insight on the band. With more details about The Rolling Stones and more interviews (which I found thoroughly interesting and full of enthusiasm), this would've been a shoo-in for a Best Documentary Oscar. However, the lack of empathy towards that end leads to a more entertaining, but much less informative, feature. Shine A Light fails to explore the history behind this celebrated band and the result is something of mediocre value.
When you take a legendary director (Martin Scorsese) and a legendary band (The Rolling Stones) the result itself should be legendary. However, the result here is of large-scale entertainment with an absence of food for thought. Hardcore fans of this aging band will admire the vibrant and enthusiastic performance on stage and will simply rule out the fact that this doesn't feel like a documentary, which is what would be appropriate to be fully entertained. As I said before, this film has the ability to entertain but doesn't have the full aspects of a documentary. It doesn't tell the actual life story of The Rolling Stones, nor does it give us enough knowledge about their lifestyle. These recreations of the subject's lifestyle is the basic aspect to this genre and, to my surprise, Shine A Light is disappointing in this area.
Article comments
1 - Mats Elfstrom
Hi!
I quite agree. One of my all time favorite music films is The Last Waltz, also by Martin Scorsese.
It has all that that Derek misses. I can understand if Scorsese did not want to remake The Last Waltz with another band, but sadly the result is not half as interesting. Also I think it's cut way too fast. Cuts lasts for fractions of seconds. The Last Waltz was filmed in 1976 (released 1978) using only seven cameras which had to be reloaded during the show. So they probably did not have the luxury of five or more shots of the same instant which gives a much more pleasant tempo to the concert sequences. The music rocks, though.