’s sprawling and revelatory fly-on-the-studio-wall documentary, there’s a great moment when we get to see it happen. It’s January 1969, and the Beatles — long-haired, scruffy, bearded, looking less like the “lads” they still call themselves than the grown men they’ve become — have taken over the colorfully dank, cavernous Twickenham Studios.
In the world of movies, and the world of documentaries in particular, there’s a place known as the cutting-room floor. What’s on it is all the stuff that wasn’t lively or punchy or resonant or dramatic enough to make it into the finished film. “The Beatles: Get Back” is an eight-hour documentary, shown in three parts on Disney Plus, that consists, to a large degree, of 1,000 moments you might have expected to be left on the cutting-room floor.
The period covered by “Get Back” is just 21 days , which Jackson documents in strict chronological order, day by day, so that we feel we’re leafing through the Beatles’ diary, with arresting details on every page. But what makes “Get Back” more than a diary is the grand story it tells, which is richer and fuller than the one told by “Let It Be.” It’s not that “Let It Be” got it, exactly. And “Get Back” isn’t all sweetness and light. Its first episode is actually much darker than “Let It Be.
The whole notion that the Beatles were going to come up with 14 songs in three weeks, and perform them live, put them under insane pressure. The chats we see between the group and Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the noodgy, persnickety, exacting director of “Let It Be,” whose dream is to stage the TV special in an ancient amphitheater in Tripoli, are grimly comical in their unreality.
The second episode is nearly three hours long, and it has the feel of an extended Beatles party. The joking around really takes off, and it’s not just about being funny. To understand the Beatles is to realize that they were, at heart, comedians. Rock ‘n’ roll is in their blood, and has been since they were teenagers, but on some primal level they were British boys imitating American rock ‘n’ rollers, and that sense of performance is layered into them.
It’s awesome.
HamillHimself 😊💜 Do you have a fav Beatles album ? 🎸🎵
Dinner is over. I’m ready for TheBeatlesGetBack
I just can’t get over Yoko sitting next to John all the bloody time, saying nothing. Did she really have nothing else to do?
(Side note: OwenGleiberman’s writing is gorgeous.)
The absolute greatest thing about this is seeing Yoko sewing and reading a newspaper while sitting in on these sessions. God how did Paul, George and Ringo put up with that shit.
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