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Greendale

2004, Movie, NR, 93 mins

Greendale: Review

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Rarely are critics so polarized by a major work by a rock legend as they were in 2003, when Neil Young dropped his confounding Greendale into their laps. Some embraced his concept album about life in a fictional, sleepy Northern Californian town as a small masterpiece that addressed important issues facing a country in crisis, and claimed that Young, reunited with his backing band, Crazy Horse, had finally produced music comparable in quality to 1990's Ragged Glory. Others found the lyrics full of clumsy sloganeering and incoherent rants aimed at everything from paranoid, post-9/11 warmongering to the endangered environment. Shot and directed with little panache by "Bernard Shakey" — the nom de cinema Young used on such previous directing efforts as HUMAN HIGHWAY and JOURNEY THROUGH THE PAST — this "musical novel" won't change any minds. In fact, by dramatizing Greendale's 10 tracks as a series of short films which, taken together, tell the story of Greendale's teenage eco-warrior, Sun Green, and her family, "Shakey" only reinforces the album's flaws — or virtues, depending on which side of the argument you embrace. Sun (Sarah White) lives at the Double E Rancho with her father, Jed (Eric Johnson), a painter of psychedelic art no one seems to want; her earthy mom, Edith (Pegi Young); her groovy grandma (Elizabeth Green), who tools around Greendale in a white Eldorado; her folksy grandpa (Ben Keith); and her bad-apple cousin, Earl (James Mazzeo), who gets into a heap of trouble when, as the song "Leave the Driving" recounts, he fatally shoots highway patrolman Carmichael (Paul Supplee). Carmichael's murder lands Earl in jail ("Leave the Driving"), triggers a media frenzy that causes Grandpa's heart attack ("Grandpa's Interview") and inspires Sun to demonstrate against the almighty Powerco corporation ("Sun Green"). The climactic showstopper, "Be the Rain," offers a taste of Young's bizarre traveling Greendale road show featuring cardboard cut-out scenery and choreography by Young's compadre, Russ Tamblyn. Young and Crazy Horse never sounded better, but Young's visual interpretation of his lyrics is so literal that the film resembles an early music video, and it's a curiously passive experience. Characters lip-synch their dialogue — badly — and when Young croons, "Jed's life flashed before him like a black-and-white Super-8" in "Leave the Driving," he briefly switches stock with bland predictability. Shaky indeed. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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