Movies you might have missed: Shine a Light, Scorsese's love letter to The Rolling Stones

This intimate documentary from the band's 2006 tour sees the director playing tribute to heroes

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in 'Shine a Light'

Two stadium shows in London last week proved once again that The Rolling Stones are still the world’s greatest rock and roll band. In a 1995 episode of The Simpsons set in 2010, that laughably faraway year, there is a poster on the wall promoting the band’s “Steel Wheelchair” tour. And yet, in 2018, the legendary group shows no sign of slowing down.

Shine a Light, Martin Scorsese’s documentary film based around the band’s Beacon Theatre shows in New York in 2006, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2008. A mixture of archive footage, backstage sequences and, most predominantly, the Stones on stage doing their thing, it almost seems as though Scorsese is paying tribute to his heroes in much the same manner as with his seminal The Last Waltz.

Crucially, however, that film documented The Band’s farewell show, whereas there is absolutely no sense in Shine a Light that Mick Jagger, Keith Richards et al have any intention of stopping any time soon. Ten years on and that remains the case.

The set is a mixture of old favourites, covers and duets with stars ranging from Christina Aguilera to Muddy Waters. Jagger, almost certainly the most charismatic frontman in the history of popular music, struts around the stage with a demonic glee honed after decades at the top. Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood are icons in their own right and it is a privilege to see the group in such an intimate setting.

The director’s affection for the music is clear in every frame. He is on record as saying: “The actual visualisation of sequences and scenes in Mean Streets comes from a lot of their music, of living with their music and listening to it. Not just the songs I use in the film. No, it’s about the tone and the mood of their music, their attitude. I just kept listening to it.”

Naturally, Scorsese even works in one of his favoured tracking shots during a scene backstage. The Clintons, Bruce Willis and Benicio del Toro were all in attendance but the stars are undoubtedly the sexagenarians on stage. These are some of the finest songs ever written performed by a band inexplicably still at the peak of their powers captured by a man who understands the music better than anyone.

Jagger, joking about the fact that the director uses the band’s music in most of his movies, has suggested that Shine a Light may be the only Scorsese film that does not include “Gimme Shelter” in its soundtrack. Perhaps not, but only a group with a ludicrous number of great songs could afford to leave out such a classic. Here’s to the next 10 years.