A Martin Scorsese documentary on The Rolling Stones! Sounds like a winner. So much so that Shine a Light is opening the Berlin Film Festival. But don't go expecting to see Mick Jagger opening up to the camera, even when it is in the hands of a cinema legend and his award winning cinematographers. As you would expect, the live concert footage looks great, the archival interviews are plugged in at the appropriate moments and we make eye contact with Mick, Keith, Ron and Charlie cavorting across and behind the stage. As good as it sounds, it still leaves you wanting and bewailing the missed opportunity. What happened?

Shine a Light opens promisingly enough with Scorsese himself visibly present and sweating out the moments leading up to the concert, waiting for the final set list to be delivered so he could begin lining up up his shots. From there it reverts into a concert film where Mick gestures extravagantly as if playing to the higher reaches of a stadium crowd rather than the zoom lens which magnifies his every quiver. Sure, for an average mortal Shine a Light would be a monumental achievement. But Scorsese is the man whose devotion to music has been second only to his reverence for the mob. A whole career could have been made on his music documentaries alone. Oh, what I wouldn't give for a sit down with the Stones a la with Dylan in No Direction Home. I have a feeling the script flipped and the documentary became something else. The Berlin Festival more rightly describes it as an "extraordinary musical film event." I'll go along wth that.