Paradox

I so wanted to love this. Willy Nelson. Neil Young? How could it not be fabulous.The intro is more interesting than the actual story. Even if it were just an album. You would have to edit out the annoying screeches. Great idea but...as always it's in the details.

Ten minutes in and so far HUGELY disappointed. Awful directing and cinematography awful acting (apparently they're Young's band so they're not actors) the soundtrack from Young sounds great but I think maybe it could have just been an album and we could have imagined the movie ourselves.

It doesn't improve. Feed like a student film... and not a great one.

Self described "auteur" Darryl Hannah stumbles around some mighty pretty territory while her cinematographer Adam Vollick fumbles to get acquainted and haphazardly experiment with his camera in this disjointed slacked jawed oater that features legendary rocker Neil Young and his band playing cowboys. With only snippets of jarring visual interest and the ambiguity of the early moments dissolving into heavy handed pretense it takes a full half hour for Paradox to pull out of its scattered torpor as Neil and the boys come to the rescue with a stirring rendition of his Peace Trail. The respite remains brief however as Young takes one of his most beautiful acoustical works Pocohantes and turns it into a dirge with a portable pipe organ. The rest of his score simply provides intrusive bombast to enigmatic skies, glorious aspens and grazing animals (deservedly noted in the credits since they give the best performances) while cowgirl in the sand Hannah incoherently presents her surreal vision with an 8 1/2 version of two cowpokes tethered to the ground flying kite like above the tent where Neil and the boys perform.

Paradox is similar in many ways to Young's wandering Journey Through the Past made in the 1970s. After the massive success of the documentary Woodstock Hollywood was eager to tap into the hippie phenomena and sought out Young who enlisted fellow pop troubadours that he would use and lose according to his needs over the years Crosby, Stills and Nash to make the same rambling self satisfied stream of conscious mess that Paradox is. This time around he's footing the bill and got a new band but the thrust remains the same, his presentation the nostalgic turn today that Lawrence Welk was offering his graying audience back in the 70s. Only the uniforms have been changed to protect the cool.

Well this is not an unmissable movie by any standard, but as everyone knows, who has been to a Neil Young gig, you cannot help falling in love with, in awe of, the artist. So you get seduced by the simplicity and truth of this movie as you would in a Neil Young concert.

This is a movie shot over a few days, so it should be rated as you would an end of cursus student effort, and in that case it is, to play with words, "the great silence" of student movies. The plot is inexistent but the images are great, and the music is outstanding.

Just go and roll with it if you feel like it. Stay clear if you only listen to bland pop supermarket sugar.

The 5 stars are for the opportunity to see and hear Neil Young and his band, Willie Nelson and two of his boys, Lukas and Micah. Lukas does an amazing version of his father's song, Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground, which I thought at first was Willie. Beautiful voice, and so like his old man. What a gift!

I liked the music, and seeing these people I was happy to see in a film (always great to see Willie, even if only briefly). Liked the ranch/old west location, the costumes, the wildlife and nature, the focus on sharing seeds and growing food, the lack of violence, some of the dialogue (there wasn't much).

This is like an overlong, surreal, poorly shot/directed/edited music video. If you are looking for a coherent story with a beginning, middle and end, this isn't it. If you like the people involved and their music and have nothing much to do, you could have this on and enjoy its special moments.