Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band

Robbie Robertson joined a rock musician's band at sixteen. They played bars across Canada and America for years. Then Bob Dylan took them on tour and they were booed on stages where they played electric. Afterwards they formed their own group and made their own records at the end of the sixties. Sixteen years later they broke up. The documentary gives that history in Robertson's account. Daniel Roher directs. It rests on Robertson's memoir. Its problem is that it has one source. Two of the other members are no longer alive and the narrative largely carries his view; the question of songwriting and royalties was argued about inside the group for years, and the film looks at that argument from one side. Against that the archive is rich: early recordings, tour footage and studio work. Its best passage is the period in which the group lived together in a house and made a record; how the music came out is described in detail. The last concert, which ended the group, had been filmed before as a separate work, and this documentary provides a background to it. Drugs and the dissolution inside the group are described and not dwelt on. Who it is for: viewers who follow the history of rock and music documentary. Who it is not for: it is one sided, there is no critical distance, and the narrative is thin for a viewer uninterested in the band.