Neil Young Photo

Neil Young: Heart of Gold

Starring: Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Ben Keith, Spooner Oldham, Rick Rosas

Directed by: Johnathan Demme

RS: 3.5of 4 Stars

2006 Paramount Classics Music

My, my, hey, hey. It's something special when Neil Young teams with Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme not to make a movie of his life but to sing and play the hell out of it on a stage. Demme and cinematographer Ellen Kuras set up eight cameras in Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, where Young and his band did two gigs in August. The first half consists of songs from Prairie Wind, the album Young recorded last year after a brain aneurysm threatened to call him out before he hit sixty. Screw that. With a voice that still stands up to the country-rock throb he coaxes out of his guitar, Young lets his new songs of hard and high living on the Canadian plains bleed into the classics he wrote for Harvest and Harvest Moon. Demme is there to catch every note of bruising beauty. You don't just hear it in the music, you see it etched in Young's face. This is more than a movie, it's a privilege.

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