Rewriting history comes with multiple risks, Peter Jackson’s attempt to reconfigure the sour legacy of the 1970s Beatles documentary “Let It Be” with this three-part series works at several levels and falls short at others.
“Let It Be” has always been a sore point for the Beatles and their fans, and the film has been intentionally kept out of commercial release since the early 1980s; rumors of restored re-releases have percolated over the years but came to naught.
For “The Beatles: Get Back,” Jackson plumbed 60 hours of footage shot by Michael Lindsay-Hogg in January 1969 along with 150 hours of audio recordings. Unlike the grimy “Let It Be” footage that resulted in the blowing up of Lindsay-Hogg’s 16mm film into the 35mm format, Jackson uses digital technology to create HD-worthy bursts of color that gives the production a contemporary look.
To his credit, Jackson acknowledged the strains that were visible between the Beatles in “Let It Be,” particularly the irritation that George Harrison displayed to Paul McCartney on how songs should be performed, and he goes “Let It Be” one step further by noting how Harrison briefly quit the group while sharing an audio recording where John Lennon expresses his frustration to McCartney over the latter’s pushy behavior in the early section of the filming. The tensions were so severe that visit to the set by Peter Sellers was cut short when the comic actor became uncomfortable with the negative vibes from the rockers.
But Jackson goes overboard in trying to show how Beatles enjoyed themselves and had fun in the rehearsing and recording of their music. Rabid Beatles addicts will enjoy the long stretches with the band romping through 1950s rock standards and even having a riff on “The Third Man” theme, and the section where they discuss credit and compensation for Billy Preston’s electric piano contributions to the music provides a funny glimpse at the business side of show business. But this becomes way too much of a good thing and the viewer gets impatient for the band to start working on their music and not covering Chuck Berry or the Everly Brothers.
However, for all the jollity in the rehearsal period and the cheerful ramshackle element of the rooftop concert, it is difficult not to watch “The Beatles: Get Back” not to realize how disorganized the band was at this point in time. The project was originally conceived as a TV special with accompanying short documentary, but a failure to agree on the special’s location and formatting resulted the TV outing being dropped in favor of a feature documentary, which was only because the Beatles owed United Artists another film and never got around to making one.
And with a self-imposed deadline of creating 14 songs within a month, the band fell far short of their songwriting goals – only five songs were previewed in the rooftop concert and two McCartney numbers (“Let It Be” and “The Long and Winding Road”) were recorded in a studio when it was determined they could not be played properly live; Harrison’s “For You Blue” was also studio recorded but was not considered for the rooftop show. There is also the question of the album that was meant to accompany Lindsay-Hogg’s film, which would be put on hold and completed a year later by Phil Spector. At one point in this presentation, the Beatles realize they’ve not released a single after an extended period and hastily agree to put “Get Back,” which happened three months after the footage was shot.
Nonetheless, “The Beatles: Get Back” provides an interesting non-canonical post-script blip. And, if anything, it serves as a reminder that the original “Let It Be” film is long overdue a return to commercial release.
As for the home entertainment release, this comes without any booklet or special features and commentaries. The DVD version, which I received, has the three discs stacked on top of each other. For a Disney release of a prestige production, this is unusually cheapjack.