Neil Young: Heart of Gold

It’s been more than 20 years since Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme presented the incendiary pulse of rock ’n’ roll with Stop Making Sense, a concert movie depicting the Talking Heads in their prime. Now in another rockin’ movie experience, Demme has filmed legendary singer/song-writer Neil Young for two nights at Nashville’s hallowed Ryman Auditorium during his Prairie Wind album tour. The songs embrace aching, aging, longing and loss as Young sings through his heart a mere few months after the death of his father and brain surgery that corrected a potentially fatal aneurysm. Demme opts not to show any audience shots, because he wants the movie viewer to feel like the sole audience member of an actual concert—and he succeeds. This, Neil Young’s touching lyrics and the appearances of country goddess Emmylou Harris and wife/musician Pegi Young make this memorable sensory experience truly eternal.