Photo Courtesy Sundance Film Festival

A humble Neil Young approached the podium of the Eccles Theatre, his longtime friends and collaborators David Crosby, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills standing in support behind him. Addressing the anti-war issues of his poli-doc CSNY Déjà Vu, a record of the band's 2006 Freedom of Speech Tour, Young must have expected objections, ones that came immediately in the Q&A. "You don't know what you're talking about," one former Iraq-based military man said.

"I know I don't. Thank you," Young replied, in an uncharacteristically timid manner.

"To the contrary I think you really do know what you're talking about," an apologist countered to a round of applause.

"That's why we're here," Young said, bouncing back slightly. He turned his attention back to the military man, saying: "I respect what you said. I really do, and I believe it from the bottom of my heart that you're right when you say it..." Then turning to his audience supporter, he added, "And, I feel the same way about you. So, I don't know what to say about that.

"The whole idea of this is just to make people think about it, and believe me, under the great spirit, I just have to say that I respect all of the soldiers so much...

"I'm sure we mean no disrespect to you and your family, sir, by saying that we're anti-war. That's just to talk about it. That's all it's about, just to make people talk. It's not unpatriotic to talk."

Were the film itself as interesting as this brief exchange, CSNY Déjà Vu very well may have been a resonant, relevant poli-doc. As it is, however, Young's film--credited for direction by his creative doppelgänger Bernard Shakey--lacks the artfulness and soulfulness that his songs so often express. While doc was made with the very best of intentions, Young truly hoping to speak out and move an audience, CSNY Déjà Vu is forgettable, which to this point, Young's work has rarely been.

Doc opens on unnecessary title cards introducing facts about the war and CSNY's involvement to raise awareness about it. Opening visual of the front windows of a moving bus, captured by a fish-eye lens, nods to the experimental playfulness of Young's Greendale, but the arty aesthetic vanishes as the film progresses into traditional talking head interviews, concert footage and man-on-the-street sound bits. Political messages, even expressed by different groups of people, run redundant, though ironically Mark Faulkner's editing continually fails to make those few messages poignant.

While Nash and Stills verbalize their support for the tour, Crosby just seems along for the ride, succumbing to what's dubbed, Young's "benevolent dictatorship." The lack of focus on the four as friends and artistic collaborators also detracts from the political messages in the sense that doc audiences are trained to see the political as the personal, and yet there's very little made personal throughout CSNY Déjà Vu. A cameo by emerging anti-war musician Josh Hisle jamming with Young is the most endearing encounter throughout.

New songs included in the tour, all quite explicit in their attack of the current administration, also miss the subtly and beauty of classic CSNY political chronicles and dissents such as "Ohio," "Cathedral" and "Prison Song." While it's admirable that the once fatalistic political views woven into the lyrics of "Wooden Ships," so despairing in fact that Jackson Browne would write "For Everyman" in response, are no longer evident in the much-more experienced CSNY, it's also unfortunate that the positive political action renders itself so artistically graceless. Video streaming photographs of fallen soldiers during a concert is not nearly as effecting as the tear-evoking beauty of Crosby and Nash's gorgeous version of My Country 'Tis of Thee.

Undeniably, Young's heart was in the right place, but his craft is so shoddy, so partial to snippets of emotion that feed sensationalism that the film's passionate message gets lost in the clamor of his not entirely intentional egocentricity. In the end, CSNY Déjà Vu fails its many opportunities to truly connect with not only the issues but the people most intimately touched by them.

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