FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 2019 The Boston Globe G7
ByTy Burr
GLOBE STAFF
Whowins the title for Biggest Jerk in Rock ’n’
Roll? (It doesn’t say “Jerk” on the certificate, but
this is a family newspaper.) Artists as varied as
Bob Dylan, John Lennon,and Morrissey have
been bandiedabout as contenders,and, person-
ally, I’ve always thought that Lou Reedshould
have retiredthe crown.Basedon a viewing of
“David Crosby: RememberMy Name,” though,
the LA musician and classic-rock legend deserves
to be up there in the competitive brackets. This is
a manso intensely disliked by his peersthat
when it came time to make a documentary about
his life no one agreed to be interviewed.
Correction: Roger McGuinn is here, so I guess
the 52 years since he and Chris Hillmanfired
Crosby fromthe Byrdsis the preciseamountof
timeit takes to heal all wounds. And Crosby’s
wife, Jan, is also a benevolent, adoring on-camera
presence, who practically goes into mourning
when the singer, in his mid-70s, heads out on one
more tour to pay the bills.
A.J. Eaton’s prickly documentary captures this
lion in winter, honest abouthis failings to a lat-
ter-day faultand keeping his mercurialside un-
der wraps for the most part. Interviewed at home
and around LA by rock critic-turned-director
Cameron Crowe (“Almost Famous,” “Say Any-
thing”), the film’s producerand a longtimeac-
quaintance, Crosbyis good, irascible company,
and on the surface the film’s an engaging jaunt
througha colorful if haplessly messy rock ’n’ roll
life. (If you’re curiouswhat the lion sounds likewhenhe’s poked, a recentHollywood Reporter
interview endedwith Crosby losing his cool after
being asked a personalquestion about Joni
Mitchell.)
He was a son of Hollywood— father Floyd
Crosby was an Oscar-winning cinematographer
— who with the Byrdsbirthed folk rock. The gui-
tar jangle of their 1965breakthroughhit, Dylan’s
“Mr. Tambourine Man,” was all McGuinn’s, but
the vocalharmonies weresteered by Crosby, who
brought them to his 1969 collaboration with Gra-
ham Nash and Stephen Stills and their 1970 col-
laboration with Neil Young. The groups’albums
are the indelible wallpaper of their era and the
songsCrosby contributed — notably“Almost Cut
My Hair” and “Guinnevere” — wereboththe
most urgent and the most quickly dated.Crosby claims he was the first of the scene to
move to Laurel Canyon and maybe he’s even
right. “Remember My Name” drives around the
old haunts,the singer pointing out whereGra-
hamwrote“OurHouse” and reminiscing about
his own relationship withMitchell before she
moved in with Nash. Archival footage of a jam
session withMitchell trying out her song“Coy-
ote” years before it turned up on “Hejira” (1976)
may be the movie’s musical high point. Which is a
problemin a documentary about David Crosby.
By the 1980s and ’90s, he was a countercul-
ture laughing stock, arrested, jailed, in and out of
treatment, and, in 1994, the owner of a new liver,
his own having beenwrecked by decades of in-
sult. Crosbyhas Type 2 diabetes and eight stents
in his heart, and the famousCuster mustache
and maneof hair are a billowy white. (He never
did cut it in the end.) He crisscrossesthe country
with kid musicians, has recorded four new al-
bums in the last five years — we don’t hear nearly
enough of the music — and the most surprising
fact of all is that Crosby’s singingvoicehas sur-
vivedas highand strongand suppleas ever. He
has a gorgeousvoice.That, at least, has never
been in dispute.
Still, this also has to be a movie about Stephen
Stills, GrahamNash, Neil Young, and others, and
none of them show up to the party otherthanin
archival interviews several yearsold or more.
Crosby tells of Nash screaming at him in fury at a
2015 concert — the last Crosby, Stills & Nash ap-
pearance to date — and it’d sure be interesting to
hear Nash’s side of the story. He also says he’d call
Young to apologize if he only had Neil’s phone
number, whichis the biggest horselaugh in the
movie.AndwhileCrosbyis painfullyfrank
throughout this documentary about his knack for
destroying friendships and drivingpeopleaway
(we learn in one brief aside that there’s a daugh-
ter who hasn’t spoken to him in years), one sens-
es that it’s easier for him to say these things now
than to have done the hard, humanworkof re-
pair. “David Crosby:Remember My Name” is a
testament of achievement and a portrait of ego,
but it never quitegets past its subject’s illusions
to properly consider his art.Ty Burr canbe reachedat [email protected].
Follow himon Twitter @tyburr.ByTy Burr
GLOBESTAFF
“Leto” is the Russian wordfor “sum-
mer,” and the movie by that name takes
place in the bloomand heat of an under-
groundrevolution.The movie’s a character
study of a scene, the Soviet rockdemi-
mondeof the early 1980 s, withcharacters
based on real people and a deep sense of in-
side baseball. Audiences who already know
the names, places, and songswill have a
bighead start overnewcomers; there are
English subtitles,but a great deal goes un-
translated.
Whenthe movieopens,the pillarsand
crossbeams of the USSR’s policestate are
still in place, but the foundation is showing
cracks. Rock concerts are overseen by zeal-
ous cultural authorities, who OK the bands
and forbid young fans fromdoinganything
morethantappingtheirfeet. The big star
in this small pond is Mike Naumenko (Ro-
manBilyk),who leadsthe zeitgeist group
Zoopark, and writes lyrics that bristle with
mordant satire. Mike has learned a lot from
Dylan, Bowie, and Lou Reedin songwriting
and attitude.He also seems aware that his
moment may be about to pass.
The script is based on a memoir by Nau-
menko’s widow, Natalya, who’s played with
intelligent fire by Irina Starshenbaum.The
movie’s Natalia is lovingly loyal to her rock
star husbandbut not above keeping her op-
tions open,and the appearance on the
scene of a young musician namedVictor
Tsoi (Teo Yoo) acts on the coupleas a light-
ning bolt. Mike sees a natural, a young rock
’n’ roller with a songwriting gift superior to
his own. Nataliajust sees a boy she can’t
stop fantasizing about kissing.
Director KirillSerebrennikov sets this
romantic triangle in a complex, encyclope-
dic setting. “Leto” has beenshot in a rich
wide-screen black-and-white, with blurts of
colorwhenever we see fromthe 16mm
pointof view of a Zoopark documentarian.
There are characters namedPunk (Alek-
sandrGorchilin) and Skeptic (Aleksandr
Kuznetsov), the former basedon Russian
punkpioneer Andrei “Pig” Panov, and the
latter an all-purpose theoretician who ad-
dresses the camera and leads the movie in-
to wild music-videofantasias — the film
stock scratchedup into anticanimations —
before reminding us that “this didn’t really
happen.”
In thosesequences, with actors and ex-
tras singing along to period chestnuts like
TalkingHeads’ “Psycho Killer,” Iggy Pop’s
“The Passenger,” and Lou Reed’s “PerfectDay,” “Leto” suggests a frisky cross between
“A Hard Day’s Night” and “Trainspotting”
minus the heroin. Elsewhere, the movie
stays arguablytoo closeto the minutiae
and emotionsof its setting; we get the fla-
vor of a rich cultural movement but not the
widerframeor connective tissuethat
would allow an outsider to make full sense
of it.
At the end of “Leto,” the birth and death
years for both Tsoi and Naumenko flash
across the screen; the former was killed in a
1990 car crash and the latter died in 1991
of a cerebral hemorrhage. They were idol-
ized by a generation of Soviet youthand
wereinstrumental to that generation’s con-
cept of rebellion — a concept that found it-
self realized in heady, unexpected ways on-
ly a few years later. Little of this comes
through in the film,which is about the
mayfly momentand three people at its cen-
ter. For those who don’t have enough infor-
mation to connect the dots,that may not be
enough. Maybe you had to be there, but it’s
a movie’s job to take us, and this one gets
only partway.Ty Burr can be reached at
[email protected]. Followhim
on Twitter @tyburr.MOVIEREVIEWYYY
DAVIDCROSBY: REMEMBERMYNAME
Directedby A.J. Eaton.At KendallSquare,
West Newton.95 minutes.R (language,
drugmaterial,briefnudity)No Stills, no Nash, no Young
— but a lot of Crosby
SONYPICTURES CLASSICS VIA APCOURTESY GUNPOWDER& SKYRevisiting Soviet socialist rock ’n’ roll
MOVIEREVIEWYY½
LETO
Directedby Kirill Serebrennikov. Writtenby Mikhail Idov, Lili
Idova, Ivan Kapitanov, and Serebrennikov; based on a memoir
by Natalya Naumenko. StarringRomanBilyk,Teo Yoo, Irina
Starshenbaum.At the Brattle.126 minutes.Unrated(as R:
language,briefnudity, alcohol,and drugs).In Russian,with
subtitles.“Leto” is set in theearly’80s, whenWesternmusicwasgettingthroughtheIronCurtain.
ARLINGTON
CAPITOLTHEATRE
204 Massachussetts Ave. 781-648-4340
6IDIGAD
http://www.capitoltheatreusa.com
FAST &FURIOUSPRESENTS: HOBBS &
SHAW(PG-13)12:30,3:45,7:00,9:45
ROCKETMAN(R)4:30,7:15,9:45
SPIDER-MAN:FAR FROM HOME(PG-13)
12:15,3:15,7:10,9:50
THELIONKING(PG)12:00,1:00,2:30,
5:00,7:30, 10:00
TOYSTORY 4(G)12:10,2:20, 4:40,7:00,
9:15BOSTON
SIMONS IMAXTHEATRE
NewEngland Aquarium,Central Wharf
617-973-5200
58 DIG
http://www.neaq.org
TURTLEODYSSEY(NR)10:00, 1:00,5:00
AUSTRALIA'SGREAT WILDNORTH(NR)
2:00,6:00HIDDEN PACIFIC 3D(NR)11:00,4:00
OCEANS:OUR BLUE PLANET(NR)12:00,
3:00BROOKLINE
COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE
290 HarvardSt. 617-734-2500
56
http://www.coolidge.org
MIKEWALLACE IS HERE(PG-13)11:15,
2:00,4:15, 7:00,9:15
ONCEUPONATIME... IN HOLLYWOOD(R)
11:00,3:00,6:30,9:45
THEFAREWELL(PG)10:30,2:15,4:45,
7:15,9:30
MIDSOMMAR(R)6:45,9:55
MAIDEN(PG)11:30,1:45, 4:00
VALLEYOFTHE DOLLS(PG-13)G11:59LEXINGTON
LEXINGTONVENUE
1794Massachussetts Ave. 781-861-6161
56IAD DOLDSS
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ONCEUPONATIME...INHOLLYWOOD(R)
3:00,6:30, 8:45
MAIDEN(PG)6:45,9:30
ALADDIN(PG)3:45SOMERVILLE
SOMERVILLETHEATRE
55 Davis Square617-625-5700
56IDIGAD
http://somervilletheatre.com/
BOOKSMART(R)2:40,5:00,7:20,9:40
MIDSOMMAR(R)1:00,4:10,7:15
ONCEUPONATIME...IN HOLLYWOOD(R)
3:00,9:20
ONCEUPONATIME... IN HOLLYWOOD(R)
1:10,4:30, 8:00
THEFAREWELL(PG)12:40,3:00,5:15,
7:40,9:55
YESTERDAY(R)6:40INFOVALID8/02/19ONLY
The BostonGlobeMovie Directoryis apaid
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discretionof eachcinema.Townsmay
appearout of alphabeticalorder so that
listingswill remainunbroken from column
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5 Handicappedaccessible
8 StadiumSeating
6 HearingImpairedIRear WindowCaptioning
DOL DolbyStereo
DIG DigitalSound
DSSDolbySurroundSound
K DescriptiveVideoServiceADAudioDescription
VIEWTHETRAILERATWWW.REMEMBERMYNAMEFILM.COM
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“ELECTRIFYING! ONE OF THE
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-Peter Travers, ROLLING STONEFROM PRODUCERCAMERON CROWE
A FILM BYA.J. EATONDAVID CROSBY:
REMEMBER MY NAME
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