Taking a break from their A Bigger Bang tour, the Rolling Stones hit New York’s Beacon Theater for a pair of shows to benefit the Clinton Foundation. Director Martin Scorsese and a battery of film’s most acclaimed cinematographers capture the action.

CRITIQUE

Much of the criticism leveled against Shine a Light revolved around the movie’s failure as a documentary. I find this silly. The movie wasn’t intended to be a documentary, nor was it advertised as one.

This is a concert film. Yes, there are snippets from archival interviews with the band, and there is a brief prologue dealing with some of the behind-the-scenes give-and-take between Scorsese and the band, but the latter is obviously a joke, playing on the polar-opposite personalities of Marty and Mick, while the former is an indication of why a straight documentary wouldn’t work.

These guys have been interviewed ad nauseum, repeatedly asked the same questions for the past forty years. Speaking as someone who can remember the band’s ubiquitous television sit-downs during the Steel Wheels era, I don’t want to hear Mick and Keith asked yet again why or how they’ve managed to keep going for forty years and/or how much longer they expect to keep going.

I also don’t care about anything that goes on backstage or went on backstage in the past, nor do I care what goes on in the band’s private lives. (Look at it this way: Stop Making Sense wasn’t hurt by its lack of non-performance footage, but Rattle and Hum became a laughable bore anytime its subjects started their precious navel gazing.)

Look, if Keef wants to snort his father’s ashes or fall out of a coconut tree and bonk his head, then more power to him; he’s earned the right to do it. What I want is a still-great band blowing the roof off the dump, which is exactly what Shine a Light delivers.

The set list for the show mixes several of the Stones’ biggest hits with some choice album cuts. “Start Me Up,” “Brown Sugar,” and “Shattered” are trotted out, and all deliver pretty much what you’d expect, but the band really shines on songs such as “Some Girls,” “She Was Hot,” and “As Tears Go By” (who’d have thought they’d dig that one up?).

And as is the norm for a latter-day Stones show, a few guests turn up. Jack White (who isn’t cut out for the job) swaps lead vocals on “Loving Cup,” while Christina Aguilera shakes what her mama gave her during a damn great version of “Live with Me.” (Aguilera’s music is about as far removed from what I like as it can get, but I’ll freely admit she has a great set of pipes.)

By far the best of the guest spots (and maybe even of the entire show) is the great Buddy Guy trading vocals with Mick and licks with Ronnie and Keith on an incendiary take on “Champagne & Reefer” (first made famous by Muddy Waters eons ago). Twenty seconds into the song I was glad Guy is still around to show us how it’s all done; ten seconds later I was wishing I wasn’t too lazy to learn to play guitar.

Not everything’s roses though. The first couple of numbers are a little stiff, and the version of “Tumbling Dice” presented here somehow lacks the infectious looseness and spontaneity of the album version (which is still the best three minutes and forty-five seconds the band has ever committed to tape). And although the sequence features my favorite interview footage (Ronnie and Keith answering the question of who is the better guitarist), I nevertheless wish Keith’s performance of “Connection” hadn’t been interrupted by said footage. He only gets two numbers on which to sing lead (the other is “You Got Silver”), so why ruin one of them?

Scorsese’s technique brings an immediacy to the performance, concentrating on the band itself, not the setting or the audience. He, cinematographer Robert Richardson and their army of cameramen (including Oscar winners Robert Elswit and John Toll, and Albert Maysles, co-director of Gimme Shelter) deftly weave around and across the stage. It’s very similar to the approach Scorsese took with The Band for The Last Waltz, but why mess with a formula that’s already yielded such stellar results? Besides, this is undoubtedly the way to approach this band; these guys are still masters at working a crowd, and attempting to find a better frontman than Jagger would be a futile undertaking (I still say Steven Tyler and David Lee Roth should be paying Mick some sort of royalties).

Shine the Light isn’t Gimme Shelter (how could it be?), but I’d say it’s a bit better than At the Max (their 1992 IMAX concert flick) and miles ahead of the misguided Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones and the uneven Let’s Spend the Night Together. It won’t change non-fans’ minds, nor will it stop the jokes about the members’ ages, proclivities and eccentricities, but it’s nonetheless both a fantastic showcase for the Stones and a reminder that they earned their status as one of the best bands rock has ever produced. That being said, would it have killed them to do “Dead Flowers”?

THE VIDEO

The 1.85:1/1080p transfer, like the original photography, is at the mercy of the variable lighting employed during the show. Close-ups often look very good (you can count every crag in Ronnie and/or Mick’s face, every bead in Keith’s signature headdress, and every groove in Charlie’s cymbals), but the rare shot from the middle or back of the theater suffers from a lack of depth and clarity.

The archival footage, which was taken from both film and video elements, is highly uneven in quality, but that’s to be expected. Footage in the black and white prologue is very, very grainy, but this is an intentional stylistic choice. On the whole the presentation falls in line with how I imagined it would look, so your reaction may vary depending on your own expectations.

THE AUDIO

Audio comes in three lossless varieties: English Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks and an English 2.0 PCM option. The mix is very up-front, with the band spread across all three front channels and only some minor reverb/echo and crowd noise pumped to the rears. You can’t go wrong whichever track you choose, though, as all three fantastically capture the show’s sound, with every note and nuance coming through clearly.

Personally I found the PCM track to be the most pleasing (I used DTS Neo: 6 decoding to open it up), but I usually tend to favor PCM tracks when it comes to music discs. English, English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles are included.

THE EXTRAS

The Behind-the-Scenes Featurette (15 minutes) is really just a loose collection of clips that didn’t fit into the movie’s prologue. Essentially what you get is more of the band rehearsing and talking to Scorsese, including a nice bit with the director and Charlie talking about how hard it is to find a good pair of shoes, and a surprisingly candid exchange between Keith and Maysles (who spent the entire concert manning a handheld camera onstage) about the former’s elderly mother. There’s also some footage of Mick playing slide and doing a pretty good job of it.

The Four Extra Songs are a mediocre run though “Undercover of the Night” (a tune which isn’t really conducive to a live performance), pretty good takes on “I’m Free” and “Little T & A,” and a fantastic version of “Paint it Black.”

FINAL THOUGHTS

Immediately after watching Shine a Light I ordered three Stones albums I didn’t already own. I can’t think of a better testament to the effectiveness of the movie.