Get Back review

[Westside Steve]

Get Back

Disney

        468 min

 

 Let me make this clear. Hearing the Beatles for the first time was undoubtedly the most important event, maybe not in my entire life but certainly my professional path.  Well before the Ed Sullivan performance I’d heard I Want to Hold Your Hand hanging out with some kids in the church basement and from that point on I knew what I wanted to do with my life.  It was the perfect storm for a nation grieving over the loss of John F. Kennedy while the baby boomers, a huge generation of young people came of age at relatively the same time.  For the next 6 or so years spanning the time through the summer of love, the fab four basically dominated popular music style and culture in America Europe and around the world.  I can say without hesitation that even though there are lots of important acts over the years, no other single musical entity has had the same influence on the world as The Beatles.  Hard to give a spoiler alert about a subject that all fans casual or otherwise are already pretty aware of, but while the subject matter of GET BACK was familiar to me the time frame and the approach was something of a complete surprise; and not a particularly pleasant one.

 Peter Jackson is a towering figure in film making. His Lord of the Rings, even given a couple of annoying shortcuts, is one of the great adaptations of all time. Unfortunately GET BACK  isn’t really an adaptation. I was expecting something like Mark Lewisohn's book which goes back to tell the entire story of The Beatles from the pre war roots to the present.  It is not.

 This particular offering documents the few weeks leading up to The Beatles final performance and album Let it Be which, in my opinion,  is the GODFATHER 3 of the trilogy that includes the White Album and Abbey Road.  During the daily  rehearsals  and discussions the decision was made to leave multiple cameras rolling through the entire process, and along with a handful of nuggets that even the most casual Beatles fans already knew,  that's what you’ll get here. It's a little bit like watching your parents marriage fall apart only in real time and on screen. By this time in The Beatles career, it was all over but the shouting. They were tired and bored and didn't really need the money. The songwriting team of Lennon McCartney had boiled down to mostly 2 guys doing their own thing (three if you count George on the outside looking in) regardless of what the label read.  Lennon's lack of interest and obsession  with  Yoko had dulled the blade of his creative genius  and now it was clear McCartney was the musical captain of the ship. (Compare Long and Winding Road and Let it Be to I Dig a Pony) All the  while Harrison became more and more resentful that his contributions were being overlooked by John and Paul.  As for Lennon’s obvious lack of interest I can only imagine how it would be living almost the entire decade in a fishbowl. Be careful what you wish for I suppose.

After the first tedious two and a half hours I was seriously tempted to bail on the whole thing but people kept saying it got better. Segment number one ends with a cliffhanger has George walks out. Segment 2 begins with George coming back with very little change. I was encouraged that the first few minutes featured some roundtable discussions with the boys but that didn't last long. Eventually it devolved back into endless sloppy non-serious rehearsing of the songs that will wind up on the last album.  I had a hard  time wrapping my head around the idea that they wasted so much time rehearsing relatively simple songs.  By that time George Martin was no longer a hands on producer of the boys and that's obvious when you listen to the music. One of the ideas about this project was that Get Back later titled Let it Be was to be a live recording with no overdubs.  So there wasn't any real producing going on at least as most of us know it. Engineer Glynn Johns  ran the mixing board and pretty much let the boys proceed at will.  Later on Phil Specter was brought in to do a little tweaking but in my opinion his legend began and ended decades ago with the 1960s wall of sound. Finally, for better or worse, the 3^rd segment features the roof top concert, with all its rough edges,  which thankfully provides a brief respite from the rest of the squabbling nonsense and animosity.    True Beatles lovers might be happy enough just to watch an almost unedited live stream of the boys, but I'm betting most of us that fall into that category will find ourselves wishing for more or at least different.  I truly believe GET BACK is probably 3 times longer than it needs to be to tell what has been told here.

 As for a grade?  I don't bet on Brown games and I don't grade The Beatles.

WSS

[ATOM]

nice review I passed out watching it last weekend