Shine A Light On Me

While he has countless Oscar-nominations for his narrative work, Martin Scorcese has a habit of collecting people. So where does fiction stop and documentary start?

It will be hapless flaw, but whenever the thought of a rock-documentary appears to me, I can’t help but envisage Rob Reiner’s over-zealous film-maker Marti Di Bergi as he introduces “This Is Spinal Tap”. It is this enthusiasm, if not the chaos, that is always present in whatever Scorcese desires to direct. This includes his study of musicians, which is now becoming apparent that it is more than a passing phase but a full-blown obsession. The proof comes from his recent output where it seems as if he has two favourite things: Leonardo Di Caprio and the artists that have been featured in his soundtracks in the past. Of course, you can taper these roots back to the 1978 concert film of The Bands’ final performance entitled “The Last Waltz”, but Scorcese’s soundtrack work is a blueprint to his probably varied record collection. His own foray into musical fiction failed with 1977’s “New York, New York”, but his love for music and musicians has only strengthened in the new century.

In the early part of the 2000’s Scorcese embarked on a project that would outweigh all of his personal studies in music. His work on producing a series of the blues would stretch to seven episodes with directors such as Wim Wenders and Clint Eastwood coming on board. What was interesting about how these were presented may have incidentally changed the future of music-based documentaries and the biopic. The “fiction within the fact” techniques which are used within the Blues series’ would later be seen with the fictionalised film of Bob Dylan in “I’m Not There”; itself taking much of it’s content from Scorcese’s doc “No Direction Home”. It is familiar ground for Scorcese. Like his mob movies (“Mean Streets”, “GoodFellas”) or his ‘lone wolf’ characters (“Taxi Driver”, “Bringing Out The Dead”) set new limits for the genres’ they belonged to; films like “No Direction Home” set a new path for the generic music movie. So why then has he reverted to nothing more than a concert film for his documentary “Shine a Light”. Perhaps it would take an artist a little less commercial to bring the innovative side out of Scorcese once again.

Originally posted 17/03/2008