Neil Young: Coastal

Neil Young and a locked-off camera on a tour bus. That’s the setup. That’s the film.

Coastal, directed by Daryl Hannah and centered on Young’s 2023 solo tour across the American West Coast, should have been an intimate portrait of one of America’s most influential living songwriters. Instead, it feels like a glorified home video, a collection of long, meandering shots that mistake access for insight, and reverence for direction.

There are moments in Coastal that briefly remind us why Young has loomed large over American music for half a century. A rousing rendition of “Mr. Soul” on pipe organ, a blazing take on “Throw Your Hatred Down,” and a wordless instrumental of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” during the closing credits. These are bright sparks in an otherwise dim, directionless 106-minute wander.

The film opens not with music but with the slow, uneventful parking of a tour bus. From there, it struggles to pick up momentum. Hannah’s camera, often fixated on the beaming face of the driver, Jerry Don Borden, captures miles of road but almost no substance. We hear musings about Howard Hughes. We see coffee mugs. We wait. And wait.

Young himself is magnetic when he takes the stage. Still full of bite and banter. “I’m so happy I was here before AI was born!” he chuckles to the crowd. There’s a quiet rebellion in the way he still resists polish, still finds joy in imperfection. But instead of letting us stay in those moments with him—onstage, guitar in hand—Coastal whisks us back to another silent bus ride, another side-of-the-road chat that goes nowhere.

There’s a curious absence at the center of the film. For all the access Daryl Hannah has—wife, documentarian, trusted confidante—she never uses it. We get no real look into their relationship, no exploration of Young’s creative process, no commentary on what it means to tour again post-pandemic. The film asks no questions and offers no revelations. It simply sits there, idling like the bus itself.

This isn’t a critique of Young; it’s a critique of Hannah’s aim, or lack thereof. When she previously directed Paradox (2018), it was a mess, but at least it had ambition. Coastal, by contrast, has none. It coasts, quite literally, on Neil Young’s name.

And that’s the shame of it. Because the man who gave us the albums After the Gold Rush, Harvest, Tonight’s the Night, On the Beach, and so many others deserves better than to be framed as a nostalgic curiosity. He is not a relic of a bygone era. He’s still creating, still challenging, still trying to make sense of a world spinning ever faster. But in Coastal, that fire is smothered under flat visuals, limp editing, and a baffling refusal to engage with the man’s thoughts or legacy.

There’s a great film to be made about what it means to be Neil Young in his 70s: still on the road, still refusing to play just the hits, still full of questions. Coastal could have been that film. Instead, it offers fragments—some lovely, some dull—but never the full picture.