But then there’s Michael.  To lift a phrase from “Dangerous”, the man is divinity in motion (assuming God considers crotch-grabbing to be kosher).  Although we see a dozen backup dancers in This Is It learning to be copycats, no one moves like him.  On stage he outshines them, though they’re half his age.  After more than forty years in the spotlight, he doesn’t have any new moves (as he did 25 years ago, at the 1983 Motown 25 concert) or any new songs (as he did at his 30^th Anniversary concert in 2001).  His act has been around long enough for current performers to count him as an influence—see Usher (born circa Off the Wall), Chris Brown (born circa Bad) et al.  None of that matters.  Now, as the New York Times said then (1984), “In the world of pop music, there is Michael Jackson and there is everybody else.”

At least, there was Michael Jackson.  Because we know both the backstory and how the story ends, This Is It has accidental emotional hits.  When Michael uses his hands to send little energy pulses to his dancers and stage crew, the genuine, innocent gesture creates empathy for a man twice accused of child molestation.  When he works out the introduction for “The Way You Make Me Feel” with his arranger—slowly, meticulously, until it feels just right—you can’t help but have renewed appreciation for the musical prowess of a man overshadowed by spectacle and sensationalism.  And when at the end of a spectacular, sensational dance routine, frozen in final position, right before the darkness steals him away, Michael smiles… you can’t help but smile with him.

And agree—the show was going to be awesome.  For the This Is It tour, Ortega and Jackson shot elaborate film sequences for “Thriller”, “Smooth Criminal” and other numbers.  These sequences segued into live performances with pyrotechnics, Orwellian screens, and dancers everywhere—dangling in the air, blasted from the stage floor, moving through the audience.  It would have been Jackson’s most expensive—and expansive—show, running through more than JA$1.8 billion and 30 years of music.  Jackson was one of a handful of singers with a catalogue deep enough to pick, choose and refuse between hit songs.

Following the months-long media frenzy surrounding his death, and coinciding with an album release, the film teeters on the edge of exploitation.  Sony, AEG Live and the Jackson estate are all a little bit richer thanks to This Is It.  But then again, having seen Michael’s last moonwalk, so are we.

All the spit and polish is applied – a glut of expensive, moving, tracking, gliding, sliding cameras; a marquee director past his prime; unexpected cameo appearances from politicians and pop stars.  If you’re a fan of the Rolling Stones (in the true, fainting-from-dehydration sense of the word) then the energetic, electric performance these four gods of rock and roll turn in will make you almost as high as Keith Richards on a slow day.  If, like me, you’re merely a guy or gal who knows that Mick, Keith, Ronnie and Charlie are rock deities and wants to understand the halo, then Shine a Light is, well, less than illuminating.

Scorsese does sprinkle in some well-chosen bits of archival footage – feature pieces on a smooth-skinned Richards, newsreel clips of arrests and releases, choice questions from old interviews with young reporters (to a 1964 Jagger: “Do you see yourself doing what you do at the age of 60?”).  It’s fun to laugh at the predictable naivete of youth; in 1964, having performed with the Stones for two years, Jagger tells a reporter he thinks the band might last another year or so.  In another excerpt, this time from a Japanese interview, the pretty reporter sitting across from Jagger is so overcome by his careless handsomeness she dissolves into uncontrollable giggles when he reveals they are both 29.

Forty years later, it is awesome to see the ravages of time on the quartet, especially the frontman and lead guitarist, and equally awesome to watch them defy age, gravity and every other immutable law of nature on the New York City Beacon Theatre stage.  And occasionally, the music is more than a slap on the best-hits jukebox – “Far Away Eyes” and “Sympathy for the Devil” are both meaningful, masterful performances.

But it was the rock-version of the Temptations staple “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)” that led my own imagination away from the film I was watching.  We all bow before the Rolling Stones.  I wonder, though, how many members of the audience for Shine a Light realize that Keith and co. rose to fame at the same time as the many Motown groups that equally defined a generation – the Temptations, yes, but also the Drifters, the Impressions, the Four Tops, the Delfonics, the Spinners and the Chi-Lites.  That almost no one under forty knows by name the members of any of these groups is tantamount to musical treason, and speaks to the racial inequality (yes, I said it) that still plagues America.  White America gobbled up the Motown music and then spat out the bands, relegating former superstars like Otis Williams (Temptations founder) to the B-circuit of metropolitan nightclubs and Vegas casinos – healthy paychecks, but a far cry from a Scorsese film (although Scorsese does have a thing for casinos in his other films).

So Shine a Light is a bittersweet experience: the African-American backup singers from Queens and Brooklyn, glimpsed here and there throughout the film, only serve as painful reminders of a niggling problem.  With few exceptions (Ray Charles and James Brown come to mind), extraordinary black musicians continue to find their way into the Hall of Fame but not Mount Olympus.  I guess I just can’t get no satisfaction from Shine a Light.