Neil Young: Heart of Gold (documentary)
One of the major names in the soundtrack of my childhood is Neil Young. I never paid much attention to him, but my dad is an avid fan, and Young's records were played often when I was growing up. So his music is familiar to me. I can hear something and say, "Oh, that's Neil Young," even if I can't tell you anything else about it. The movie "Neil Young: Heart of Gold" is a concert film that captures why Young's career has lasted four decades, why so many performers who came after him consider him a godfather, why he is revered in every musical circle from country to grunge. The reason? Because he's GOOD. Directed with masterful understatement by Jonathan Demme (whose "Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense" is widely regarded as almost peerless in its genre), "Heart of Gold" takes us to the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and lets us see Young and his band in action, unadorned and without fanfare. There are no tricky camera angles or cool editing tricks, just long, unbroken takes and plenty of close-ups. Demme's idea is to let the songs speak for themselves, and to give us a fly-on-the-wall view of Young's intimate performance.
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