The Last Waltz (Special Edition)

It doesn’t take a diehard fan of The Band to appreciate this mother-of-all-rockumentaries. Martin Scorsese’s artful, affectionate, and sharply edited footage of musical luminaries such as Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, and other Band cronies holds up just fine more than a quarter century after it was recorded. In fact, given that so much of the retrospective attention afforded to these same characters amounts to dry, nostalgic scrapbooking, this film is an even more precious artifact than the average thumbnail lets on. For the sake of contemporary analogy, it’s as if Paul Thomas Anderson had documented the Smashing Pumpkins’ final gig, or if Steven Soderbergh were to capture a farewell concert by U2. We have yet to refine our own Last Waltz drinking game, in which a swig might be cued by the film’s various drug-addled interviewees or by Robbie Robertson’s smirk-inducing rock-star asides. In any case, 20 minutes of this movie makes the average Behind the Music look like a KARE-11 Extra. As we’d hoped, MGM’s long-awaited digital reissue does it up right, too, replete with outtakes, commentary by Scorsese and Robertson, and a newly mixed audio track that Vietnam era freaks-turned-home-theater-geeks can happily crank up for added retro-rock bluster.