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Just about anyone who knows me well can tell you what my all-time favorite DVD is. In fact, I love this movie so much that I have taken to the habit of being quite a philanthropist with it. Meaning, anyone with whom I meet and who shows a keen interest in its subject matter, I give them my copy and set out to buy another. I must be on my seventh or eighth copy by now. Spreading the greatness of The Last Waltz is well worth the $9.99 eight times over.
When I set out to write on this topic, though, I had to do some serious introsepctin' -- what makes Scorsese's 1975 documentary on The Band's last concert so magnificent? I admit, I am biased: I love The Band, and I love all the guest appearances who showed up that night to help bring the boys home just as much. So my opinion of the film was tainted even before the first time I ever saw the opening title card: "This Film Should Be Played LOUD!" It was expected that I, along with any other seventies classic rock fan, is going to appreciate the documentary. Yet the question is a pertinent one, does the music make up for any lack of camera technique or the overall quality of the filmmaking? How much can a film be judged beyond the quality of the subject?
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Jim Ridley, in a 2008 'look back' piece (obviously he was above any title directive) for The Village Voicecalled the film a "rock doc [that] all but invented the form while presaging the music video." In another review, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times remarks on the film's 'real' quality as its best; "the film is arranged in loose chronological order, [and] there is little obvious editing within each scene. This takes advantage of cinéma vérité's strong point -- its ability to show exactly what happened, moment by moment, the bad along with the good." Whether you are a fan or not (because Ebert certainly was not a fan of this film), there is no arguing its influence on the rest of "rock docs" to follow.
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Joel Selvin of the San Francisco Chronicle: "Filmmaker Ondi Timoner followed the entangled rise of these two bands from the Pacific Northwest with an obsessive compulsive's eye for detail. Every ugly moment is on the screen -- from the onstage fistfights to the Georgia roadside marijuana bust -- as the two bands seek their respective fortunes." The screen plays out like a drug-addled version of Bob Saget's first season of America's Funniest Home Videos, for all of us old enough to remember what watching your buddies' band recorded in your garage on VHS was all about. Dig!'s success lies in it's relativity to its time and perhaps therein lies the lesson.
From Pennebaker to Timoner, with a very young Scorsese in between (he was 34 years old when he madeThe Last Waltz), the one thing these documentary filmmakers share in common is their ability to reflect the madness of their time through the music that defined it. The key to a successful band documentary is not to imitate that which has already been done. Instead, 'document' the music in the medium of which it lives, and you stand alone to make a great film.
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