Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006)

There are two kinds of Neil Young movies, those done by Jim Jarmusch like Year of the Horse, which is grungy and gritty and looked like it cost 1 dollar to shoot the entire shebang with a few extra cents for edits, and those like Heart of Gold, by Jonathan Demme, where everything is clear and crisp and brightly colored and the music fits the location of Nashville almost as well as Robert Altman's treatment of the city. While Crazy Horse might provide some of the better rocking tunes of Young's career, his album Prairie Wind is like a near perfect compilation of folk songs, light ballads, and other diddies that you can only get from someone trying to one-up a work like Harvest. Combined together, Demme and Young deliver the goods.Now, this isn't to say it'll be for everyone; certainly you'll have to probably already like Prairie Wind (of which the concert was filmed pretty much as its debut for an audience), and there may be one or two tunes (i.e. It's a Dream) that are way too sentimental even for die-hard Neil fans. But this being said, if you already dig the record, then it's about as precious a gift as one can ask for. And for those who might find some flaws in the album itself, at the least the musicianship in the band is incredible, and it all leads up to some classic Young tracks (i.e. title of the movie, Old Man, Needle and Damage Done, Cortez the Killer), and Demme films it like it's meant to be a golden cornfield or other. It's also fascinating to see Young divulge some really autobiographical stuff (i.e. dad's death, daughter, lovers, etc), when one sees how personal someone gets on the flip-side of the Bob Dylan coin to the audience.It might not be perfect- some of the early interviews are superfluous, but at it's best, you'll understand why Young is so appealing as an artist, and how his brand of inspired folk is enduring, powerful, and awe-inspiring. And it's Demme to boot.

I too, like Neil Young. He is definitely an icon in the music world, and much of what we have today in the way of music is based on people like him, the Beatles, Sex Pistols, etc.HOWEVER...I think that people come to a point where they think something is GOOD just because an ICON is singing it. This movie, for the most part, bored the crap out me as Neil sung about his guitar "it cries when I leave it" his kids "they will move on." It is like he takes a statement and puts it to music, and that is BORING. Like me singing "I went to the store. Bought some eggs" The end of the show is awesome...he plays some of the songs with which most are familiar.

Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006) **** (out of 4) Over the past couple months I've been getting into Neil Young's solo work a lot more. A couple years ago I was able to see CSN&Y in concert and Young's performance really stuck out to me so I wasn't to view a documentary and picked this one since the reviews had been great for it. This film was shot at Nashville's famous Ryman Auditorium and from what I've read the concert took place a couple days before Young was having brain surgery and several fans seem to think this was a goodbye concert in case he didn't make it. The first nine songs are all from Young's 'Prairie Wind' album, which I've never listened to so hearing them in this concert was my first time. I really thought the songs were very good, although they were certainly depressing and you can see some pain in Young's eyes as he is singing them. The second part of the film is when we get some of the classic songs including 'Old Man', 'I Am a Child', 'Heart of Gold' and a downright terrific 'Harvest Moon'. There's some brief interview footage at the start of the film but the rest of the movie is Young doing his thing and he delivers a terrific show. There are countless times where Young stops and tells some stories, which are all very funny including one dealing with his daughter. Demme does a brilliant job at not trying to make the film too flashy. He takes the music and moves the camera to capture that mood. Emmylou Harris is also on hand playing guitar and background vocals.

As the first genre listed on IMDb for this "movie" was Documentary i watched it expecting a documentary. As it turns out that genre is probably only referring to the first 5 or so minutes of the movie. The rest of the runtime is just a concert registration, which was a shame for me. I'm not a fan of Neil Young or his music, i just watched the movie to watch a legend talk, the same way i watched Walk The Line to broaden my horizon, even though I'm no fan of Johnny Cash.The concert is well played and well recorded, but if you're not into Neil Young it's not very entertaining. There is hardly any show element, it only proves that he can play live just as well as in a studio.