Review of Gimme Shelter (2013) by Everett J — 27 Apr 2008

[i]Gimme Shelter.

[/i]dir. Albert Maysles.

David Maysles.

Charlotte Zwerin.

This film documents the Rolling Stones' 1969 tour culminating in ugly violence and a mad array of questions. It starts with the Stones playing Madison Square Garden. Gradually, the scene shifts to documenting the free concert at the Altamont Motor Speedway. The camera focuses lazily on concert goers tripping or chilling, doing whatever it is people do at a gathering of this magnitude. Ike and Tina Turner take the stage as does Jefferson Airplane and the Flying Burrito Brothers. But the crowd progressively gets more restless and a few fights break out over the course of the film. The much maligned Hell's Angels have been given the herculean task of keeping people off the stage in exchange for $500 worth of beer. So, the Angels are drinking, the kids are loaded on god knows what, and some heavy violence goes down. The scene is certainly tense and there is a definite feeling of impending doom. It's simply a matter of when. Of course the audience watching this at home don't see it right when it happens. Fortunately, we are allowed to see it with the Stones who are in a studio as the footage is being edited. One of the directors, Charlotte Zwerin slows it down and shows us the knife and the gun. The great free concert has, due to myriad factors that have been repeatedly discussed in a number of forums, created a very public death. A man was tried and acquitted because the gun trumps the knife in terms of an actual threat.

But, this film is more about the event itself than the music or the performers. There really isn't that much music in the thing. This isn't the Monterey Pop Festival film or even Woodstock. This is a deconstruction of the process of putting on such a massive concert in just a few days. It's about the fragmentation of the so-called Love Generation and explodes the myth that people subject to discomfort can still take the time to be cool with one another. Plus there's the bad acid going around and an inordinate number of terrible trips. The film does have a particularly interesting element and that is being able to watch the Stones watching the film in the studio. Their reactions to various scenes give a human element to the ugly, brutal energy that permeates every aspect of the film. The film does another thing quite well. It captures the deadness of the hollow hippie eye. This is widely considered to be the death knell of all that peace and love bollocks and it honestly couldn't have gone any other way.

Still, the music is stellar and make this film worth sitting through. The aesthetics are quite hideous as crowds and board meetings have little or no dramatic appeal. Seeing Mick twirling in slow motion and the look on Charlie Watts's face makes this a necessary exegesis on the cult of the ideal personality. It's impossible to watch this now without suffering the realization that the Stones have become a corporation, an icon so permanent that nothing will come along to uproot them until some seriously bad shit happens. Back then Mick pouts, prances, and parades his ultra bad-ass self to a mass audience of salivating head cases looking merely to get close to their god. This film captures the essence of the Mick cult. His lips alone are a totem to his universal sex appeal, something that most of the rest of the film sorely lacks.

Overall, this film is a visual mess. Yet, as a document of a specific place and time where things went horribly wrong, it is necessary and vital. The anthropological value of this film is impossible to calculate. It clearly shows that the wages of free love are death, mayhem, and bad vibes. Yet, the music elevates this piece for as long as it lasts. It gives it resonance and a purpose. Otherwise, it's just a lot of haggling and fat naked hippies wobbling about to prove to the world they have divested themselves of inhibitions and are truly free. Ultimately, the film evokes a mood of distress and cold reality. The kids are so hungry for another good trip and one wonders what the typical reaction was to the concert that day but especiall the day after when the debris started fluttering down. The film manages to close the sixties with an emphatic slamming of the cellar door. The Family had butchered their way to infamy but a few months before, this concert showed the world that the youth have a corrosive streak that occasionally manifests itself into acts of supreme violence. The Hell's Angels are not strictly to blame for the chaos that ensued on their watch. By most accounts, they did what they were supposed to do and a handful of the more than sixty in attendance got a wee bit out of hand. They were the authority and any attempt to question it was shut down. Of course when you have hundreds of thousands of kids with their general hatred of authority, you're going to have problems. Some kids are going to have their skulls cracked open. That's just the way it is...