Shine a Light

A documentary by Martin Scorsese. Rated PG. Now playing at the IMAX Theatre Canada Place

At the start of Shine a Light, Martin Scorsese’s new concert documentary on the Rolling Stones, I thought for a moment that the famous director was being played by Eugene Levy, enjoying his mockumentary-style annoyance at Mick Jagger’s resistance to having “cameras flying about” during the band’s two-night performance at Manhattan’s art-deco Beacon Theater.

Although the Stones themselves produced this, Scorsese has the last word by interrupting almost two hours of live footage with snippets of interviews from the band’s golden age. (Erstwhile bassist Bill Wyman is glimpsed once, Brian Jones not at all, in the most glorious black-and-white grain you’ve ever seen in IMAX.)

Back in the present, the most interesting thing about the set list is seeing Jagger go over pages and pages of handwritten choices (best category: “medium known”). There are guests on-stage, including a teeth-grinding preamble with Bill and Hillary Clinton and musical add-ons from Jack White, Christina Aguilera, and—in case we forgot where this music came from—Buddy Guy, who kills on Muddy Waters’s “Champagne and Reefer”.

Obviously, tunes like “Brown Sugar” and “Satisfaction” hold up a lot better than later time wasters such as “Shattered”, but there are few of those. And the aggregate effect, although sometimes wearying, supports the notion that if the band matters, it’s mainly because of their still-contagious mix of blues, R & B, country, and folk strains.

The giant-screen format is, of course, unforgiving of the Great Stone Faces. (Jagger’s cheeks alone look ready for their own 3-D spelunking adventure.) But the scale also makes it gear heaven for guitar freaks. Those triumphant riffs ring larger than life with Keith Richards and the underappreciated Ronnie Wood banging them out on Buick-sized Strats and SGs. Charlie Watts, as usual, simply looks pleased to have such a great seat. These guys might be almost past it, but they still can’t be played by anybody else.