Film Review: Neil Young’s ‘Mountaintop’

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If you ever wished you could be a fly on the wall at a Neil Young recording session, his new film “Mountaintop” may put that desire to the test. Or at least it’ll severely try the patience of any u…

recording session, his new film “Mountaintop” may put that desire to the test. Or at least it’ll severely try the patience of any unsuspecting dates who get dragged along by Young fanatics to the movie’s one night in North American theaters Oct. 22, as they realize, possibly to their horror, that the entire filmgoing to consist of borderline found footage picked up by stationary cameras in a recording studio where Young and his band Crazy Horse are cutting a new album.

It’s a small subset even of the Young faithful, then, that will enjoy “Mountaintop.” Speaking as part of that very subset — and someone who would never, ever subject a loved one to an experience quite this micro-targeted toward the mega-fan — I’d say that “Mountaintop” provides a valuable service in capturing what it’s like to be in a recording studio at length, with all the bickering and tiny experiments and small eureka moments that entails, better than any other music doc ever has.

Young is working again under his longstanding filmmaking pseudonym “Bernard Shakey,” a nom de plume that all but advertises that we should never expect what you’d call a steady directorial hand at the helm. In the ultra-vérité “Mountaintop,” “Shakey” assumes filmgoers knows why they’re there, so he doesn’t include any on-screen identifying credits or have anyone mention that this is the first album he’s recorded with Crazy Horse in seven years .

With no interviews or other supplementary footage, the film just offers glimpses of the 10 new songs being recorded, one at a time, in what would seem to be a compressed period at the Studio in the Clouds, near Telluride. Oxygen tubes have been brought in to assist the musicians and engineers — and no other apparent substances, although drummer Ralph Molina is seen angrily begging, apparently in vain, for a joint.

To say that this inside of a peek into the recording process is for specialized tastes risks being an understatement. But “Mountaintop,” if nothing else, may be about to become every oft-beleaguered producer or recording engineer’s favorite cult movie. For the rest of us, it offers a lot of small pleasures, too, once you accept its hemmed-in setting and settle into its rhythms.

 

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