in media res

Lately, the Rolling Stones are reviving their (hi)story the grand way - right there on the cinema screen, supported by Martin Scorsese, director of films like The Departed or - perhaps most famously - Goodfellas. Intrigued by seeing the story of such an epic rock group depicted through the eyes and ears of Scorsese, I went along to watch one and a half hours of the New York concert of the Stones, called “Shine a Light”.

The first few minutes introduce the film team and the protagonists, Scorsese talking of directorial difficulties and his worries about not burning up Mick Jagger in the middle of the concert. The cameras had to be positioned so that nothing of the performance was lost to the future cinema audience, the play list was revised and checked and checked again between “Martin” and “Mick”, and shortly before the concert the audience, then in the cinema, becomes aware of Scorsese’s worries about the whole project. Then - Scorsese disappears behind a soundboard, it seems, directing the cameras from a room upstairs while the Stones rock the crowd.

Watching this film in the cinema, it seemed striking and wondrous to me through how many different technologically “mediated” devices this spectacle had to go in order for the cinema audience to be enjoyed. First, there is the concert itself, performed in front of a live audience. Then, there are the cameras, swinging around the place to get Mick and his band from all angles possible. Then comes the connection between the cameras and Scorsese, the appearance and disappearance of the director in the film. But unlike a documentary, the director or maybe a voice standing in his place does not direct the audience through the film - it is the concert itself performed in front of the live audience and - months later - again in front of or in the cinema halls of a much different audience. Whereas the live audience is actually jumping up and down, singing along and dancing like hell, the cinema audience watches the concert (is it still a film? a documentary? a live DVD normally bought at amazon to remember a concert at home now watched on a huge cinema screen?) slightly moving their heads or tapping their feet. I have to say, I actually wanted to jump up and start dancing alongside the live audience right in front of me. And yet, the darkness, the distance between the concert and us - spatially as well as through media and time - somehow kept all of us in our seats. No! One couple actually did start dancing in the dark. They stopped after one song. Meanwhile, the concert went on and as the film/documentary/hourlong music video ended, the camera moves up into the New York sky, leaving the Duke of York cinema audience in Brighton, UK with just about an idea of what it could have been like to actually have been there. I have to say, though, that the performance was truly grand - thanks to Mick and his boys!