MOVIE REVIEW : Rock ‘n’ Soul From Stones, McCartney

Very few movies have ever captured the body and soul of rock ‘n’ roll the way the new IMAX concert film, “The Rolling Stones at the Max” (IMAX Theater), does.

It’s an overwhelming experience: a torrent of Gargantuan, mind-swelling sights and jagged, roaring sounds. It drenches the ears and eyes. Shot by Julien Temple (“Absolute Beginners”) and three other location directors, mostly during the London climax of the Stones’ worldwide “Steel Wheels “ tour, it may be the ultimate rock concert film--more than “The Last Waltz,” more than the Stones’ previous “Gimme Shelter” and more than the more emotional and reflective “Get Back” (at Laemmle’s Music Hall), which director Richard Lester has drawn from the 1989-’90 Paul McCartney Tour.

It’s a matter of logistics and technology. IMAX is the ideal format for this kind of spectacle. A great concert; the perfect hardware. On a vast stage, a coruscating mass of girders, smoke and neon, rigged out to resemble a nightmarish L.A. vista from “Blade Runner,” the Stones and their 10-member backup band blast a cannonade of 15 songs from the ‘60s through 1989--commencing with “Start Me Up” and roaring right through to a long, rousing encore of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”

Temple may be the Stones’ ideal director. There’s a visual wit, swagger and flash, a brainy sarcasm in his style that seems tightly connected to the music. The images cook as much as the band: wiry master guitarist Keith Richards and Ron Wood grinning, leaning and strumming; stony Charlie Watts cracking a rock-solid drumbeat; bassist Bill Wyman alone, to his side--while the indefatigable Mick Jagger preens, prances and prowls seemingly every inch of that mammoth set.

There are few lyrical interludes, almost no respite and only one real mistake: an experimental video rendition of “2,000 Light Years From Home” that breaks Jagger and Richards into soupy electronic fragments. (Maybe it works simply as a breather.) At the end, both audience and performers seem drenched with sweat, drained and ecstatic, hung up together in some vast communal gasp of release.

The mikes and cameras catch it all: the gigantic floozy balloons swelling up during “Honky Tonk Woman,” the yowls and shouts and eerie tympany that herald “Sympathy for the Devil.” And whenever the huge, five-story-high IMAX image sweeps from the stage and takes in the vast crowds, it’s staggering: You can see each separate head, just as you can see each blade of grass in an Andrew Wyeth landscape. If rock ‘n’ roll always has a visceral impact, this movie brings it out more fully than any other.

There’s a resonance to both these concerts that a current rock performer couldn’t get. At the time, it may have been hip to downplay the Stones as wizened rock trolls or McCartney as a bloated pop entrepreneur. But, for most people who grew up in the ‘60s, the Stones and Beatles were so central, pro or con, to their cultural awareness that the songs become talismanic, magical. Wave after wave of memory rolls on behind the intense sensory impact of the immediate performance--and we remember the way we felt when we first heard “Satisfaction,” “Ruby Tuesday,” “Hey Jude” or “Can’t Buy Me Love.”

Or, in 1964, when some of us first saw “A Hard Day’s Night.” Making this startling Beatles backstage comedy/fantasia, Lester probably wasn’t aware of crystallizing an era. The movie, instead, had a breathless throwaway charm that matched the panache of the Beatles: sexy Paul, quiet George, melancholy Ringo and wily, sardonic John.

Now, more than 25 years later, when Lester shoots McCartney, who looks almost sadly puffy and paternal in the close shots, he’s very aware. Lester has always been regarded as a master editor--in the ‘50s, he and Alain Resnais were said to have revolutionized movie montage--but now he’s mellowed and so has his technique. “Get Back” has its rousers, stompers and wailers, its “I Saw Her Standing Theres” and “Live and Let Dies,” but it’s also somewhat delicate and wistful. It’s both gentle and cool, exquisitely framed and a bit distant, like some of McCartney’s dreamier performances.

Lester, far more than Temple and his confreres, makes the past a presence. Shot partially by Jordan Cronenweth (of, again, “Blade Runner”), “Get Back” is full of limpidly edited ‘60s montages: of space shoots, Vietnam, hippies, Kennedy, King, the youthful Beatles at Shea Stadium and, most shatteringly, of John Lennon alone, cut in during McCartney’s impassioned “Let It Be.”

Lennon is a fairly constant off-world presence during McCartney’s concerts; Lester’s editing pulls him in even more. And McCartney’s decision to load the program with old Beatle songs shows an obvious attempt to ease or bury one of the most culturally wounding of all post-’60s feuds. In “Get Back,” it’s probably mostly Lennon that McCartney wants to bring back and, unfortunately, he couldn’t coax Ringo or George to join him. He lets Lester do it for all of them.

The Stones don’t have that problem. Of the original Swinging London fivesome, only the late Brian Jones isn’t there for “At the Max.” So the finale has intense reverberations: especially a towering up-angle shot, which captures the core quintet in a line, arms around each other’s shoulders, Keith Richards in the center, to accept the crowd’s last explosive salute.

This shot, like nothing in the more mournful and tender “Get Back,” catches a moment stretching into eternity. Perhaps it’s because it condenses some of the ‘60s: the decade of the group, the gang, the community, the band of brothers and sisters--whether they were protesters, vets or (only) rock ‘n rollers.

That’s what’s saddest about “Get Back”: a concert film which, almost incongruously, includes image after image of people in the audience dissolving in tears. McCartney sings, for his first encore, “Yesterday” with an acoustic guitar-- keens it almost, in a voice that sounds raw and close to breaking.His face right then--round, crowned with ragged hair, worlds away from the old madcap moptop--is like a flower opening and drooping simultaneously. That’s what “Get Back” (MPAA rated PG) has: our sense of things lost that can never be recovered. That’s true nostalgia. But, as for “The Rolling Stones at the Max” (MPAA rated R for language): that’s rock ‘n’ roll.

‘The Rolling Stones at the Max’

Mick Jagger: Vocals

Keith Richards: Guitar

Charlie Watts: Drums

Ron Wood: Guitar

Bill Wyman: Bass

A BCL Group presentation of an IMAX Corporation production. Location director/creative consultant Julien Temple. Location directors Roman Kroitor, David Douglas, Noel Archambault. Executive producers Michael Cohl, Andre Picard. Concept Cohl. Cinematographers David Douglas, Andrew Kitzanuk. Camera Consultant Haskell Wexler. Editor Daniel W. Blevins. Music Rolling Stones. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (Language).

‘Get Back’

Paul McCartney: Bass

Linda McCartney: Keyboards

Robbie McIntosh: Guitar

An Allied Filmmakers/MPL/Front Page Films presentation, released by Seven Arts/Carolco. Director Richard Lester. Producers Henry Thomas, Philip Knatchbull. Executive producer Jake Eberts. Cinematographers Jordan Cronenweth, Robert Paynter. Editor John Victor Smith. Music John Lennon, Paul McCartney. Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG