Ottawa Citizen: In Greendale, Neil Young searches for new perspectives

Ottawa Citizen - canada.com network: "Some people pick up a camera because they have a need to record what they see. Others take photographs to show us the things we can't see.
Neil Young is one of the few who seems to do both. He records the images in his own head, and offers them to us as pictures of everyday life.
He's done it musically for decades as a rockin' folk music troubadour, but he's been experimenting with film for almost as long.
In 1972, he made a personal, low-budget odyssey under his nom-de-celluloid-plume, Bernard Shakey, called Journey Through the Past, which intercut live concert footage featuring Crosby, Stills and Nash with surreal images of Klansmen on horseback and talking-head politicians. A few years later, he followed it up with Rust Never Sleeps, the 1979 concert film with Crazy Horse, which he also directed.
Then in 1982, he made The Human Highway, a quasi-narrative adventure that fused the low-tech, verite heart of the French New Wave with the quivering soul of Young's songs.
Now, there is Greendale -- a new film that will make its way across North America one city at a time.
Greendale is called a 'companion piece to the album of the same name,'' but even those unfamiliar with Young's music will be able to understand it as a multi-narrative tale, because Young is a natural storyteller.
He writes songs in images. Think of any Young song, from Powderfinger ('I held my rifle to my eye, never stopped to wonder why, then I saw black and my face splashed in the sky ...'') to Wrecking Ball ('The restless line of cars goes stretchin' down the road but I won't telephone 'cause you might say hello'')-- and his talent for conjuring mental pictures with an emotional edge comes through."

Katherine Monk
The Ottawa Citizen