| We hear so much about the ’60s. Baby boomers can’t shut up about the ’60s. Advertisers keep selling us the ’60s over and over again. To add insult to injury, The Rolling Stones are still touring.
In this context, it is rather ironic that the re-release of one of the legendary documentaries of the 1960s is more antidote than contributing factor to our current ’60s malaise.
Gimme Shelter is a first hand account of the infamous "free concert" headlined and initiated by The Rolling Stones at the Altamont Speedway outside of San Francisco, and the almost hysterical buildup to it. Made by master documentarians Albert and David Maysles along with longtime collaborator Charlotte Zwerin, Gimme Shelter takes a road less travelled as it slowly builds up to the event where some claim that the ’60s came to a premature end.
Three hundred thousand people gathered at Altamont ostensibly for peace, love and music – kind of a sequel to Woodstock, which had happen only four months before. By the time the Stones played, however, the scene had degenerated and, in an atmosphere of paranoia, fear and tension, a man was stabbed to death by a Hell’s Angel, who had been hired as security. Miraculously caught on film, this is the moment the whole film is built around. It is also a flash point of criticism and discussion.
Oddly enough, at the time of its initial release Gimme Shelter was condemned as exploitative. Some went so far as to suggest that the Maysles were profiting from murder. Others accused the Maysles of portraying the Stones as innocent victims and that the filmmakers were covering up for the band because it had helped finance the film.
Viewing the film now, those harsh criticisms seem misguided or downright incongruent. Although the filmmakers make no attempt to explain the events or assess blame, they hold little back in terms of showing the Stones for what they were – a rock band, little more, little less. In the face of the violence, Mick’s exhortations for the crowd to "chill out and sit down" seem rather pathetic. What they had set in motion was now out of control and out of their hands.
It may be a testament to the Maysles Brother sense of objectivity that the film can play in two (or more) such divergent directions. It could be read as a vindication of their ideas and technique of documentary filmmaking. Then again, it could be a testament to how time and distance can dramatically alter our perspective of a film.
Stylistically, it is exhilarating to see a documentary that speaks in pictures and not words. The Maysles always avoided voice-over and expert testimony as ingenuine and outmoded methods to get the story across. They understood that those techniques of storytelling (so prevalent in documentary today) were actually incapable of conveying what they wanted to say.
Like Zen masters, the Maysles never aim for the target, the camera is never pointed at what is obvious or at what is expected. Somehow they seem to be able to capture a moment in time like no other filmmakers. There are times during this film that you actually begin to feel what it was like to be there.
I would love to be able to recommend Gimme Shelter as a wild fun-filled trip with the Stones across America, but I can’t. You may never have seen the ’60s this way before, you may never want to again – you may never want to become intoxicated or drop acid again. It is, however, potent cinema filled with surprises. |
