By Reverend Billy

This might seem to some like a slam-dunk.  Making a home movie with Neil Young.  Lotsa people want to be backstage with Neil and Daryl. The thing is, this isn’t just a home movie.  Daryl Hannah was very gutsy to do this, and she's pursued a cinematic aesthetic to a startling pay-off from the songs on stage.

She knows that so many of us are drawn in by his drily hilarious comments, just being Neil. But the director and editor is sure of her pacing, calm enough to keep each shoot going until it connects with another story coming in. The film is always in motion but never in a hurry.

In the film, the gentleness of the banter of the old friends, especially between Neil and Jerry Don Borden who drives the Silver Eagle bus, has a special relationship to the songs that Neil sings (in classic bright/dark shots by Ms. Hannah).  For some of the songs Neil lets us witness a deeply personal story, and he seems very alone then.  But there are songs that are poetic concentrated versions of the talk we have just heard on the bus and backstage.

The drama of the movie comes from the push-pull of the casual free-wheeling friendly talk and then the deeply moving songs on stage.  They seem to be opposites, but Ms. Hannah shows us how they cause each other, too.

The director clearly has a deep respect for the half-century old friends everywhere in the big crew.  I talked to one crew-member who had been a friend of Neil’s since 1st grade!  A song that seems fed by the loyalty of old friendships is “I Am The Ocean”, the Walt Whitman-like embrace of a whole, long life and all the places and people that have touched it.

In Coastal the songs seem caused and presented by all the love backstage as well as all the love in the folks waving their arms in the seats. Daryl Hannah, muse and partner to the singing poet Neil Young, understands what love can do.