Neil Young concert film a unique look at life and mortality

In watching Jonathan Demme’s “Neil Young: Heart of Gold,” I was reminded of the director’s other great concert film, 1984’s “Stop Making Sense.”

The earlier movie can only be described as pure, unfiltered energy, captured on film: a chronicle of the maniacal brilliance of The Talking Heads, belting out tunes and sweating buckets, and their lead, David Byrne, whose explosive, gyrating body was a marvel of modern gymnastics. Now, with a somewhat more straightforward (but no less stunning) look at Neil Young’s 2005 “Prairie Wind” concert in Nashville, Demme has taken the idea of Talking Heads’ youthful exuberance and subjected it to the natural progression of aging, where it has evolved into reminiscence. Even without using the same band or genre, Demme has inextricably connected his two films, which now come across as a travelogue of life. It seems like a facile concept—something like saying that where we are now is a sequel to where we were 20 years ago. But that may just be the point here. The connection that the Young film makes to its audience is universal, a connection that many of us cannot immediately comprehend, but there is a general understanding that we will, someday.

Properly, “Heart of Gold” is a concert film, not a documentary—Demme lets the music do most of the talking here. (For the amount of emotion being doled out here, simply talking about it would have been unsatisfactory.) However, several brief pre-concert interviews with Young and his backup bring us up to speed. In early 2005, Young was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. This, coupled with the death of his dementia-stricken father several months previously, drove Young to write a cadre of new material for an album entitled “Prairie Wind.” (He hadn’t written any new songs in two years, Young’s wife Pegi reports.) He became so dedicated to passing on his message that he recorded several nights before his surgery. Finally, as he prepared for the live premiere of “Prairie Wind” at Ryman Auditorium, he requested that Jonathan Demme film the event.

Edited with impossible tautness and care, “Heart of Gold” paints a slow, complete picture with each individual shot. Young himself is photographed simultaneously as a giant and a simple, unremarkable individual—seemingly a contradiction, but perfectly positioned to convey his celebrity and his humanity. Meanwhile, his fellow band members are brilliantly regarded at unlikely moments. During Young’s vocal solos, long shots focus on others onstage, who of course concentrate on the task at hand—but also give occasional glances to their leader, their expressions implying both great love and great worry.

But, as previously mentioned, such concepts are best conveyed through the music; Demme keeps relative distance to allow it to encompass the film. What that music implies, the core message of the film, is a man who knows what he knows about himself and about existence in general—a decidedly dichotomous affair of knowing everything and nothing. Young has always had preternatural control over his highest notes, but the defiant wail of his early career has since been transformed by age and experience into something that can be wizened or childlike, depending on the mood. In the most reminiscent songs, Young waivers his pitch so much that it becomes tearful in regarding his past—it is a voice that speaks with great understanding of life’s tribulations. Conversely, however, Young still considers himself something of a greenhorn. One of the most poignant moments of the film comes when he introduces his audience to his guitar—it’s one that once belonged to Hank Williams. His demeanor implies that he still has his idols, that he still holds concepts that he feels will always beyond his reach—he’ll always have more to learn about life, right up until the moment he dies. It’s a great moment of humility.

A friend of mine once told me an intriguing philosophy, one that I could not (would not?) entirely understand: as humans, we don’t really fear death in itself, but we fear the idea of dying at a young age. Here, Neil Young—his own name a perpetual reminder to the invincible 20-something musician that he once was—appears to us as a man who is old enough to no longer fear death. His deepest concern now seems to be setting his affairs in order, and making sure that his friends and family know how much he loves them. However, such an approach does not represent a defeat, to stop living life and wait for death’s embrace. He’s still got a lot to do with however long he’s got left. “Heart of Gold” merely represents an acceptance of mortality: life will eventually go on without him, just as it will eventually go on without all of us, and he seems all right with that.