The Beatles: Get Back (2021)

First off, The Beatles: Get Back is…a lot. You’re looking at almost 8 hours of footage of the Fab Four rehearsing, talking, recording, listening, goofing, bickering, and (yes) performing. You know if this is for you or not. It has a good deal to recommend it as a historical document and as a record of and examination of creativity and group dynamic. But even with that, it may be a hard sell for non-Beatles-fans. Because you spend serious time with these guys. Be warned. But, of course, you may not be reading my take on a documentary with “Beatles” right there in the title if you’re not favorably disposed toward them. So.

That said, there is a lot to chew on just in the undertaking itself. Director Peter Jackson and his WETA team have rehabilitated (I can think of no other word) and re-edited the footage shot in January 1969 for a constantly shifting Beatles project that eventually became their famous rooftop concert and then the film and album Let It Be. Thus this isn’t so much a new documentary as a re-interpretation of an earlier one. Again, the word rehabilitation springs to mind, since a lot of what Get Back does is provide a fuller narrative than that of the 1969 film, which many regard as chronicling the breakdown of the band. Jackson’s film is decidedly not a breakdown chronicle, but more a record of a group of men working for something and getting around various obstacles – many of their own making – to achieve it. More or less. Plus, those men are The Beatles, one of the pop-culture touchstones of the 20^th Century (and beyond, based on this film’s reception). The jokes write themselves from at least two sides, given Jackson’s record of long movies about sloggy quests (“Return of the Kings,” maybe? Anyone?) and continued fan interest in the band (“A Month in the Life?” “Hard Three Weeks’ Night?”) – but those things also somehow work to make this compelling.

Part of the appeal is simply the time-capsule nature of it. All touched up by Jackson’s tech, the footage brings 1969 rock-and-roll London to vibrant life. It’s worth a view for the fashion alone, especially where producer and swinging-dude-chic poster boy Glyn Johns is concerned. But also check George Harrison’s flowered boots and rainbow-coat/purple ruffles ensemble that predates Prince by decades, or John Lennon’s parade of white linen shirts and vests (“continuity clothes,” he says) and serious sideburns. Or the way George Martin looks like he stepped right out of “Mad Men” (as does the amount of tobacco & alcohol on offer). Suited record label execs and fluffy-coated rock stars mingle while batting hardly an eye. Actor Peter Sellers stops by and seems mostly confused. Soul keyboardist Billy Preston sits in and provides such a jolt that John and Paul McCartney consider making him “a fifth Beatle” (an epithet he winds up with anyway). Yoko Ono hovers constantly at John’s elbow, like a human version of one of Philip Pullman’s daemons. The other wives and girlfriends pop by also, along with Linda Eastman’s young daughter, who even gets a Yoko-esque turn on the mic. And once the guys take to the roof, Londoners from all walks and stages of life listen in and are asked for comment. Most approve, from the woman who loves hearing music on her lunch break to the old man who wouldn’t mind his daughter marrying a Beatle because “they’ve got money!” But others don’t – “It woke me up from my sleep,” one woman whines in a moment right out of Monty Python, “and I don’t like it!” Days in the life, indeed – but not just of the Beatles.

In some ways, all that is the best argument for this project being 8 hours long. One of the most rehabilitative parts of Get Back is that it keeps the Beatles in context. We see their world. We hear them discuss other musicians (Elvis, Ray Charles, even, before he shows up, Preston). George brings a stack of Motown LPs into the studio. Get Back does keep the Beatles on a pedestal as deserving hours of our attention. The film also yanks the Fab Four out of the box they often get put in as a somehow standalone act. They were not. We see these guys pull from, borrow from, steal from all sorts of things from gospel to Eric Clapton to the old drinking songs their uncles sang at parties. And even after they move their rehearsal from a cavernous (and very ill-advised) film soundstage to cozier Apple Studios, the Beatles are never alone together. Techs wander in and out adjusting cables. Producers tweak knobs. Managers take notes, pour drinks, move instruments, or just tap their feet. The original film director, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, strides around with omnipresent cigars, making suggestions from the wild (filming the concert at a Roman amphitheater in Libya with “2,000 Arabs” in the audience) to the mundane (maybe a movie rather than a TV show). Pretty girls lurk outside the studio hoping to catch a glimpse of the band. In its breadth, Get Back makes an important point that, for all the pressures and conflicts internal to the band, there were also quite a few external pressures. After all, these four young men had basically conquered the world before age 30. Where do you go after that? What can possibly be expected of you? Or, maybe, what can’t?

That, more than anything else, is what hangs over this moment in Beatles history. John would later describe them in this time as “miserable,” but what they really seem is “restless.” Ringo is making movies. George is entranced by jazz riffs and the guitar-centric careers of men like Clapton. John and Paul have new romantic relationships. There is a palpable sense that they simply do not know what to do, and they settle on making music and/or a filmed show of some kind because, well, that’s what they do. It’s what they have done. It’s clearly time for a next step, but no one wants to step up and say what that step should be – or be the first one to say that they might all need to take different steps. One of the saddest revelations is that no one seems able to tell them that the choice needn’t be either/or, and the band doesn’t have to permanently break up to free them for other things. Eventually, real feuds do emerge, but it’s not acrimony that I sense watching Get Back so much as nerves.

What it becomes on a personal level, then, is a study in responses to stress. A clock is ticking on this project, which Jackson illustrates by gradually marking off days on a superimposed calendar. We know it. The Beatles know it. Paul seems to know most of all, and tries the most often to act as first among equals and push things along. But he’s too used to deferring to, or at least feeding off of, John – who is placidly checked out on a twin high of drugs and his love for Yoko when he’s not mugging for the camera. Ringo sits quietly at the drums and mostly listens (he’s eternally Watson to all the others’ Sherlocks) though he does weigh in with (usually practical) advice from time to time. George, desperate to contribute, but lacking the clout and/or confidence of John and Paul, simmers until he abruptly walks off the set at lunchtime one day saying he’s quit the band. It takes days to get him back. This is familiar Beatles lore – but it’s also familiar territory to anyone who’s worked a group project on a deadline. Someone takes the lead; someone seems not to care; someone plays peacemaker; someone gives up and stalks out. One of the small pleasures of the film is being reminded of how, bracketing their talents for a moment (a big ask, granted), the Beatles were still ordinary people. As a sometime musician and actor, I’ve been a couple of those guys at times, and come close to being the rest. There’s a nice through line here connecting these famous men to your local cover band, your high-school garage band, or maybe even your department team at the office.

You can only bracket the talent for so long, though. And while the other facets of Get Back provide pleasure, the actual musical aspect provides the real joy. These guys are good. There’s a thrill in watching them grab instruments and sync up, whether it’s on their own new tunes like “I’ve Got a Feeling” or on snippets of old blues or Chuck Berry songs. There’s even more thrill watching them create in real time. If you know nothing else about this, you’ve heard of the moment where Paul’s random chord strumming and humming morphs into the seeds of “Get Back.” It takes the song a painfully long time to reach its final form, including a well-meant but cringey detour into life as a pro-immigration song, but even that is somehow satisfying. It reminds us that these things so imbedded in our cultural fabric didn’t spring fully formed out of some ethereal genius’s head – but were worked on, and worked on, like, a lot. After all, before “A Hard Day’s Night” was a song title, it was just Ringo’s description of the aftermath of his band’s work ethic. The Beatles worked hard and played hard, and they loved to do it. The excitement they feel when Preston comes in with his wide, constant grin and effortless funk riffs leaps off the screen – as does the lull that settles whenever one of the four is missing, as when George quits or when Paul leaves for an appointment. In pieces, they do not sound as good, period.

When they’re on, though – boy, are they on. Presented here at greater length, their rooftop show is a real banger. And suddenly, as they put on a real, live show for real, live people, in addition to good music, something else happens. Paul loses his twitchy nerves and looks happier than he has for hours of film. John wakes up. George settles in. Ringo carries on. Billy Preston is just happy to be there. They have fun. Real fun. And the eight-hour-ish length pays off, because we see the results of all the work, the rest, the goofing, the bickering. All the pieces matter, finally. And for a few minutes, the men in the band are free of the pressures of having to be The Beatles and simply get to be the Beatles, which is what they were always best at anyway. In other words, after a weeks-long journey, they get back to where they (once? always?) belonged. And it’s great to see them there. In our times, especially, it’s somehow nice to be reminded that returns like that are possible.

(Streaming on Disney+. Rated TV-14 for cursing, smoking, drinking, infighting, and general rock star tomfoolery. Recommended to those who are Fab Four fans. Also to those interested in the late 1960s or in the ins and outs of human creativity. Or those who really want various Beatles tunes stuck in their heads.)