Part of Nashville: A City On Film
Nearly 20 years ago and following a life-threatening surgery, Neil Young emerged with the record Prairie Wind. To perform the music for the first time along with a thoughtfully selected peppering of classics, Young assembled a band of long-time associates and took to the stage of Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, the former home of the Grand Ole Opry. Etched in amber, forever enshrined on film and the reverent memories of those who were there, HEART OF GOLD stands as an exquisite paean to the muse that calls the Mother Church “home.”
“The concert film has never looked or sounded classier…. In capturing and melding two performances of Young and his band of master musicians last August at Nashville’s acoustically legendary Ryman Auditorium, Demme challenges himself to create a poetic work that’s far more than a mere recording of artists at the top of their game, while deepening his long involvement with music on film.” —Robert Koehler, Variety (Jan 26, 2006) “The August blue full moon that Demme captures in the sky above the Ryman acts as a benedictive symbol of Young’s humanist theater-in-the-round. The night and the event, in other words, are blessed…. It’s hard not to feel like one bearing witness to the miraculous.” —Keith Uhlich, Slant Magazine (Feb 9, 2006) “Casting his subject in an autumnal glow, Demme again eliminates the space between artist and audience, and Young responds by performing without a whit of self-consciousness. He could be at the Ryman or in his own den — and one of the concert's backdrops simulates just that…. Demme's film gets past the legend, zooming in on Young's aged, heroic face and finding an artist as human as the rest of us.” —Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club (Feb 15, 2006)
