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Powerful

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

As much as I've always enjoyed the music of Neil Young (starting with his stint in Buffalo Springfield,thru C.S.N.Y & (most)of his solo out put, I found this curious little film a head scratcher. It seems to start out as a documentary about...well...um, Neil Young in various phases of his career. Starting with some blurry video footage of Buffalo Springfield,in a television appearance,thru some sparse footage of Crosby,Stills,Nash & Young (gee...who would have thought?). If this film had pretty much stuck to this premise,it would have made for a satisfactory documentary. The problem is that Neil opted to let his film go totally out of control,careening into some abstract episodes that even most midnight movie fans would have found utterly confusing (no matter how much Marijuana they're behind). Now,don't get me wrong. If you think I'm some typical old fart that can't deal with anything out of the ordinary (I list films such as Eraserhead & El Topo as personal head movie favourites),guess again. Part of the problem of personal vision films is that sometimes the vision is so personal, the only ones that could grasp the message is the artists themselves. I'm not saying 'Journey Through The Past' is unwatchable, it's just that there is a treasure trove of much better stuff out there. It's still worth at least one look (for those who were not born yet & want to get a better idea what the 1960's & 1970's Hippie counter culture was all about). Originally slapped with an R-rating by the MPAA,this film contains much pot smoking & salty language. Pretty tame by today's standards.

Was discussing the film this afternoon with a friend who hadn't seen it. I told him I was in a slightly altered state of mind when I saw it, and that it was the kind of film that you think afterwards you might have better understood with a clear mind. Not necessarily and probably unlikely. Our college film club was showing it on a Saturday night. It wasn't the sort of movie you'd see at the local theatre. The fact remains that one particular remark Neil made somewhere during the film hit me like a divine revelation. It totally changed my understanding of reality.Might sound pretty far out, but I've often wondered about that film. Couldn't remember the title. If anyone tracks a copy down, put me on your list of people who are interested in seeing it again.

This is an odd film to digest. Fans of Neil Young will appreciate it for its historical value, but it's very mundane in parts. It actually has the feel of Reality TV, but of a mostly wordless variety.The camera follows a very long-haired Neil Young and his band riding an elevator, it shows them walking around in hallways, it shows them talking with sound-engineers. You see him walking around a junk-yard. You get to see Neil park his car and sit on the front-fender with a woman smoking a cigarette and eating berries and not talking for at least 10 minutes, just staring at the countryside. For some reason you also see Richard Nixon speaking at a Billy Graham Crusade.Then again, you also see him playing some great early live concerts with Crosby, Stills & Nash, which is reason enough to see this film. But then the film becomes sort of a music-video, showing what appear to be black-robed Klansmen riding horses on the beach, and then what looks like a red-robed Catholic Cardinal riding in a limousine, all of which apparently has zero connection with the rest of the film. It's all edited together in a sort of stream-of-consciousness, which is perhaps the whole point, as that style of narrative was common in the early 70's.If you can find it, view it for the concert-footage plus an example of Neil's fascination with disjointed imagery which sometimes flows together like a visual non sequitur.

It's been almost 30 years since I've seen this, so my memories are very foggy. It's comprised of lots of footage of Neil Young and band members (including Crosby, Stills and Nash) in concert and rehearsing (I can clearly remember them rehearsing the song "Alabama" in a barn somewhere in Alabama). But the film is mostly a cornucopia of Neil Young's eye view of the rural South circa 1972. Lots of rainy footage from the band's bus: that sort of thing. There's footage of an American Legion meeting with a rather healthy, corn-fed, white audience singing "God Bless America". That's interspersed with footage of the poverty-ridden conditions of the neighboring black towns (the South was still very segregated, and there were still significant numbers of people living in what was akin to Third World living conditions). There are two other scenes that I can recall. One is a scene with Neil and his wife (girlfriend?) eating strawberries, which is only memorable because it's so lonnnnng! The other scene is a very trippy one, with guys dressed up as Ku Klux Klan members riding on horses on a beach, while the soundtrack from "King of Kings" is playing. Outrageous and fantastic! As memory serves, I don't think it was a great film, but it was a rare opportunity to see glimpses of America not shown by Hollywood or on television. And if you're a fan of Neil Young, it's a chance to see him performing relatively early in his career. I think the film would be more essential to audiences today, because while the new young generation is always putting down on the "hippie" generation of the sixties, they've no idea what it REALLY was like, and how much it has changed - thanks to activists who fought the system and demanded change.I had the soundtrack record to this back in the seventies. It was quite good! It's a shame it was never released on CD. A CD of that, and a DVD of this film is long overdue!