Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Martin Scorsese's documentary intertwines footage from The Band's incredible farewell tour with probing backstage interviews and featured performances by Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and other rock legends.
Scorsese's The Last Waltz is widely regarded as the greatest concert film ever made, and for good reason. The cinematography is exceptional — Scorsese assembled a top-tier crew and shot it like a feature film, with multiple cameras, thoughtful lighting design by Boris Leven, and compositions that treat performance as high cinema art. Novelty is equally high: the film essentially redefined what a concert documentary could be, blending live performance with intimate interviews and guest appearances in a way that felt utterly singular and has never quite been replicated. Plot, in the documentary sense, is solid — the narrative arc of The Band's dissolution and farewell carries genuine emotional weight, though it is somewhat secondary to the performances. The acting/interview segments are candid and revealing, though not uniformly deep across all subjects. The ending, while appropriately elegiac, doesn't land with the full emotional punch its premise promises.