(edit: lots of spoilers below. maybe go see it before you keep reading)
I saw it tonight.... Had a surprising amount of old concert footage, backstage footage, amateur photos, home movies shot in Woodstock. The talking heads were informative and gave a lot of insight. The story of the group's early years was well illustrated.
I still have problems with its one-sided presentation. Especially the last 15 minutes or so of the film... Robbie just lines up all the talking heads he can, and one after another he gets them to more or less say, "Robbie wrote all the songs."
I mean, Garth Hudson is still alive, right? Why is Robertson getting friends and business partners to say he wrote all the songs instead of just asking Garth, "As you know, Robbie says he wrote 'Chest Fever' (an organ solo). Is that correct?"
It was weird how the movie seems very careful to answer all the charges against Robertson, but those charges themselves are never even mentioned.... that without the rest of the band's knowledge, Robbie claimed 100% authorship for all the early tunes. The bitterness from the other guys about the financial disparity that created. That "The Last Waltz" was shot and edited by Robertson's friend, and it ignores the fact that it was primarily (maybe only) Robbie who wanted to have a farewell show and quit touring.
In this film, Robertson just comes flat out and says that by 1975, he *had* to write all the songs because Levon and Richard were strung out on heroin. Which is problematic to me for two reasons. One, it's a little distasteful to throw your two friends under the addiction bus when they're dead and can't answer that charge. And two, even if Robertson did write all the 1975 material, I'm pretty sure those aren't the songs whose authorship was ever challenged.
It's a good movie. I'm glad I saw it, but it's not going to be the last word on the story of the Band.
It would be like Paul McCartney producing a 2-hour film that examines his complicated relationship with Lennon, and even though he effusively praised Lennon's talents, he used *only* talking heads who supported his positions in their arguements, blamed Lennon and Harrison for the Beatles' problems, and he released such a movie with no participation whatsoever from the only other living member of the group.