Without its unfortunate events and outcome, this would had been an
extremely mediocre documentary to watch, in all honesty.
I wouldn't even necessarily call this a documentary. It's more like a
registration of events but without any background- and insight
information given. No interviews, no voice over and no explanations or
whatsoever given. You might like this kind of approach but to me the
first half came across as a very mediocre registration of some The
Rolling Stones concerts.
But don't worry, things start to turn more interesting after a while.
First of all, it all starts to become more interesting the moment
things are starting to come together for the 'Altamont Free Concert',
which was supposed to be a sort of response to 'Woodstock' but things
are starting to become even more interesting when things are starting
to hit the fan, during the concert.
I think that everybody is already very familiar with all of the events
that went down but this documentary actually shows you how it all
happened and things started to go from bad to worse. It even shows you
the fatal stabbing and some of the other brutalities, committed by the
Hell Angel's, who were brought in by by the management of The Rolling
Stones, as security during the concert. Granted that they got
aggravated by a stoned crowd but things should not never gotten as far
as they did.
If this documentary is also one other thing, it's a great anti-drugs
film! Loads of people attending the concert obviously were high off of
something and no, I'm not even talking about Keith Richards. This
documentary is such a huge contrast with another documentary
"Woodstock", which was a registration of the Woodstock concert, held in
the same year, with the same sort of crowd attending. While Woodstock
was peaceful, Altamont Free Concert had a totally different atmosphere
to it. Violence and a constant sense of treat and danger, was very much
present and gets made sensible in this documentary, mostly due to the
drug use, which made some of the people do some very crazy and scary
stuff. In all of those regards, this documentary is also a great and
intriguing one to watch.
Otherwise, no this is not a great documentary by any means. It's not
that well shot and isn't being an insightful one in any way. Also
please don't watch this expecting to hear lots of great Stones music.
There is music present of course but it's really not being the thing
that this documentary is all about. Besides, the Stones aren't exactly
sounding at their best in this, to be very honest. And yes, I like
Stones music! This documentary just simply isn't really about them at
all, which is all due to it that there were simply bigger things
happening.
It's like a registration of music history, that shows one of the most
shocking and dreadful events to ever happen during a large concert. In
that regard this is perhaps also being somewhat of an essential
viewing!
8/10
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