“Get Back” was released this week, Documentary about the Beatles In three episodes, which can be seen on Disney +. The Peter Jackson film, over six hours long, uses leftover images taken in January 1969 by Michael Lindsey Hogg, during rehearsals, disc and film recordings”Let it be“.
As we already wrote in this column, “going back” would be a good idea A chance to analyze how much the Beatles are still moving In Brazil and the world. Despite being one of the bases of Western folk music, the importance of the Liverpool quartet in new generations is diminishing. Ask anyone under 30 about the importance of John Lennon in the Western world: your young interlocutor probably won’t know how to tell the difference between Yoko Ono’s husband and… Elton John. I faced this ignorance last week!
The Beatles have never had films to match their work, especially when they starred in them themselves. The average first movie,”a hard day’s Night“(1964), at least a good portrayal of Beatlemania.” Help “(1965), which is much weaker, tells a surreal story in which the members of the Indian Beatles, who want the ring worn by Ringo, are haunted. The tape perhaps “Roberto Carlos and pink diamonds“(1970) is as weak as the original.
The Magical Mystery Tour (1967), directed by Paul McCartney, shows that being a musical genius doesn’t guarantee anything in other areas. The film tells the blunt story of the foursome’s journey through the English countryside, as the band shares a bus with family members and colorful characters.
“O Submarino Amarelo” (1968) has some merit for being a psychedelic animation that offends the band’s famous colors and songs. “Let It Be” (1970) is a bleak realistic movie without dynamics. Depicting the band’s last period, the original images lack quality (surprisingly restored in “Get Back”), capable of turning any fan of the band into an enemy of cinema.
Until “The Return”, the last film approved by Paul, George and Ringo was the “Anthology” project (1995), Documentary about the Quartet’s path, as long as a white board.
Interestingly, it is in the films that the quartet has licensed that the worst filmography about themselves can be found. Depending on the Beatles themselves, the lack of harmony between music and cinema will remain unforgiving. “Get Back” is also a movie authorized by Paul, Ringo, and the John and George family. Will she be able to overcome the fate that drives nearly every movie that’s allowed to go bad?
But, around the Beatles, there are also romantic films in which the actors play the role of the quartet. In this field there are few productions that deserve to be commended. Back Beat: The Five Boys of Liverpool (1994) tells the story of the band’s early years, when Fifth Elemental Stuart Sutcliffe was still playing for the Beatles. It’s a sensitive and well-made film, focusing on the lean period.
“The boy from Liverpool(2010), one of the quartet’s best characters, addresses the youth of John Lennon, who lost his mother shortly before meeting him Paul McCartney, which he also lost. Both films embrace their pre-fame periods, creating characters that are consistent with historical facts.
There are still films with The Beatles as their theme, although they themselves don’t even appear. In this area there are three salient points. In “Youth Fever” (1978), Robert Zemeckis showed Beatlemania from a fan’s point of view. The director achieved a good mix of reenactment of history and fun by introducing American fans who wanted to watch the Beatles live in the audience in The popular Ed Sullivan TV show In 1964, when the band made their first trip to the United States.
Across the Universe (2007) contains beautiful pictures and songs of the Beatles that tell the story of a couple from the 1960s. And she has been able to be competent in what she proposes to do. The quartet’s most recent movie was “Yesterday” (2019). NS The movie has an original plot, in which all of humanity would have forgotten the Beatles, except for the hero, an amateur musician. Despite its promising start, it can’t go beyond being an ordinary diversion whose script repeats the stereotypes of the most predictable romantic comedies.
There are many documentaries about the Beatles, almost all of them very well behaved, endorsing the same milestones in the quartet’s career, almost always without any bold narrative or historiography. The best of them is “George Harrison: Living in the Material World” (2011), where Biography of Martin Scorsese or the Beetle stillIndicating its ambiguity and paradoxes. With great access to profiles and good interviews, the film could have gone further, showing unprecedented sides and perspectives.
Although there are good moments, the movies about the Beatles have always been a lot less than their music. In an age like ours, where sound is directly linked to image, the Beatles deserve to be matched by film, especially those “authorized” by the band themselves. An authorized movie is not necessarily bad, like I tasted “Bohemian Rhapsody” Which brought Quinn back into the imagination of digital youth. We’ll see if The Return will fill this gap.
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