It’s quite a harvest: previously unreleased footage of one of modern American music’s most metamorphic artists, back before he had yet earned such a reputation. The Neil Young of Harvest Time (using his pseudonym Bernard Shakey for director’s credit) may be the musical master we know still – indeed as he was somewhat known then, in the early 1970s – but his status as a titan of American folk-rock was as yet still in the making. It was his 1972 record Harvest that would help cement that status, encourage him to explore new creative impulses and, thereby, cement his status as a titan of American culture full stop. Watching Young at work putting together this most pivotal record is, whether you’re a fan of any or all of his work, or none of it, at least a most edifying experience.
To Young’s credit, Harvest Time isn’t merely a chronicle of talent in the process of being honed and channeled into something concrete, though this is certainly also to Young’s credit. In this candid, intimate footage, capturing unforced moments of artistic collaboration in full flow yet rarely lacking in a level of dramatic substance necessary to make for enjoyable watching, Young is both a maverick musician and songwriter and a compelling central figure. Whether writing, recording or hanging out with friends and fellow artists, he possesses a kind of laid-back magnetism combined with obvious, though never ostentatious, artistic aptitude.
It’s the music-centric sequences, however, that hold the most value. Young may have molded these raw materials into a simple, sturdy and satisfactory cinematic shape, but it’s in the extended accounts of rehearsing and recording that his movie sings the strongest – something of which he and editor Rachel Simmer are evidently cognizant. The array of circumstances and locales in which these creative processes occur not only afford the movie an essential variety, lest it become some monotonous trudge through the same scenario scene after scene, but also a fabulous opportunity to see how a singular talent adapts to different demands, challenges and opportunities. There’s tipsy, jovial camaraderie when singing three-part harmonies with his Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young counterparts; blithe, blissful easiness when playing with his band in a barn on his pastoral paradise home; friction and confusion leading to near-transcendent power when working with the London Symphony Orchestra.
It’s a light movie, though not insubstantial; somehow, at over two hours, it doesn’t lag – each sequence seems to play at its own suitable pace to a natural finish and the transitions from one to the next feel full of possibility for inspiration, humor and the kind of easygoing charm that defines Harvest Time as a whole. Yet, though it’s hard to imagine this movie any other way, it’s only perfect in that it perfectly achieves its modest ambitions. As a patchwork of fairly professional home video footage, it can only do said footage proper justice if it presents it in the same sincere spirit in which it was created. One suspects that none of this was ever intended to be revelatory stuff and, thus, it’s not, nor might it ever have been in the hands of any director nor editor. Young’s diehard fans, of which there are many, may disagree but such would be their wont. The rest of us may find it a fine, agreeable account of impressive work but a less impressive work in itself.
It’d be a hard heart, though, that could dismiss it – made of steel, perhaps, not gold. Harvest was a momentous record in retrospect and so any such earnest depiction of its creation could never lack for content. The opening segment in the “Harvest Barn” is lulling and beautiful, the LSO scenes are most elucidating and Young modulates very handsomely through a potentially tricky final third, winding the movie’s way through humorous and entertaining encounters with a number of interesting characters to a fittingly peaceful close, back on Young’s farm. It’s a poignant end, too, given where Young would take his career in the ensuing years, though Young is sure never to belabor any emotional beats. The music speaks for itself, after all, so the movie lets it and its creator do the talking. It’s a lovely listen, overall, just as it’s a lovely watch.
Photo courtesy of Trafalgar Releasing
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