SOL2: Movie Review

This evening I saw “Once Were Brothers,” a documentary about Robbie Robertson and the Band, with the emphasis on “Robbie Robertson.” You might have to be of a certain age to remember the Band, known partly as Bob Dylan’s band in the late 1960s, but they were a great folk or country rock band of that decade and into the 1970s. The original group of Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Richard Manual, and Garth Hudson last performed in 1976, celebrated in the film “The Last Waltz.”

            This movie is about two-thirds Robertson narrating his version of the Band’s formation, and almost nothing about what the rest of the Band members did after the group broke up. There’s quite a lot about how everyone but Robertson got involved with drugs, but nothing about how the Band continued to perform without Robertson in the ’80s and ’90s, or how Helm fostered a music scene in Woodstock, New York, where all the Band members had gotten houses in the ’60s, until he developed throat cancer in 1998. (Woodstock was the location for the big pink house that gave the group’s first album, “Music from the Big Pink,” its name. An old friend of mine bought Helm’s house in the late 1970s; throughout that house were huge numbers of electrical outlets in the basement and the second floor, where the Band rehearsed, but very few in the living spaces on the first floor.)

            As a documentary about the Band, the film is profoundly unbalanced. But the music, the music, the music almost redeems all. If you are a fan of the Band, wait until it hits Netflix, and for good measure, watch or rewatch “The Last Waltz.”

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I’m participating in the 13th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 1 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!