YOUNG'S 'GREENDALE' VISION.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

NEIL YOUNG'S ``Greendale'' is the perfect marriage of music and images, a low-fi movie masterpiece that vividly captures both the grim realities and hippie idealism in Young's absorbing song cycle.

Arriving as it does in an election year, the film feels like a blast of fresh air, a topical movie with an actual political viewpoint and an ornery dedication to nobility at a time when most people seem hellbent on embarrassing themselves.

Shot on Super-8 and blown up to 35-millimeter, the grainy ``Greendale'' has something of a home-movie feel, appropriate given that the film essentially puts pictures to the saga of the Green family, a story that Young first unveiled last August (earlier if you count the concerts) when the ``Greendale'' album hit stores. The coarseness also perfectly complements the two- and three-chord blues vamps played by Young and his longtime backing band, Crazy Horse.

``Greendale's'' 10 songs detail the lives of three generations of the Greens, a family living in a coastal California town. (The film was shot around Half Moon Bay and on parts of Young's Northern California ranch.) The elder statesman, Grandpa (Nashville session legend Ben Keith), looks at the world and doesn't like what he sees (bucking - or accepting - change has always been a favorite Young theme). ``The moral of this story,'' Grandpa says, ``is not to get too old, the more time you spend on Earth, the more you see unfold.''

Grandpa's son, Earl (James Mazzeo), is a Vietnam vet and determinedly aspiring artist, and Earl's teenage daughter, Sun (Sarah White), is finding her place in the world, making forays into political activism. Some bad things happen, then some good, the devil (Eric Johnson, Young's road manager) pops up now and again, and the story circles around, building to a high-energy finale that might spur a blip in voter registration for young people, should a few fresh-faced stragglers happen to wander into a theater playing ``Greendale.''

While the movie has an intentionally amateurish aspect to it (the ``actors,'' most of whom are Young's friends and family, lip sync the lyrics to the songs), there is a real beauty to the images that Young captures with his camera. And there is nothing accidental about the precise, detailed observations about these people contained in Young's songs. ``Carmichael'' nails the bitterness and absurdities of grief as well as any song in recent memory, and ``Bandit'' is heartrending in the way its narrator, Earl, holds onto his dreams despite a life filled with disappointments.

Young reserves some of the best lines for himself. When a herd of television news crews overstep their bounds in ``Grandpa's Interview,'' Grandpa complains, ``That guy just keeps singing. Can't somebody shut him up? I don't know for the life of me where he comes up with that stuff.''

If Young sees himself as part of the problem, he's also trying to find his role in the solution. He chooses his battles well and somewhat predictably (if you've journeyed through his past) - environmentalism, libertarianism (he's no fan of the Patriot Act) and Grandpa's fight for the ``freedom of silence.'' In the end, it comes down to ``a little love and affection, in everything you do, will make the world a better place, with or without you.'' It's a message that bears repeating, no matter how tired it seems. And in ``Greendale,'' Young dishes it out with uncommon conviction.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

GREENDALE - Three and one half stars

(Not rated: contains language that you'd hear on TV, some adult themes)

Starring: Ben Keith, Eric Johnson, Sarah White.

Director: Neil Young.

Running time: 1 hr. 33 min.

Playing: Landmark's Nuart Theater in West Los Angeles.

In a nutshell: The perfect marriage of music and images.

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Photo:

The teenage Sun (Sarah White) gets her political feet wet in ``Greendale,'' a movie set to the music of Neil Young.