Get Back, an extraordinary (and essential) documentary about The Beatles
There are many documentaries about The Beatles, and yet when we thought we had seen it all, a new documentary appears that changes everything. I am referring to Get Back, the documentary reissue of the Get Back sessions, edited now by Director Peter Jackson after he was asked a few years ago by the living members of The Beatles to revisit the extensive footage shot for Let It Be.
The film takes us to January 1969 at the Twickenham Film Studios, the place chosen by the Beatles to produce some sort of documentary that will conclude with a televised concert. The idea is to rehearse and play the songs from their latest album live, something that they haven’t done in three years. But it's a difficult time for The Beatles. Their manager and almost fifth Beatle, Brian Epstein, died not long ago and they have just received not very good reviews for the film Magical Mystery Tour. All members are also going through significant personal changes. In this way, Get Back shows us some somewhat a lost Beatles. Precisely because of that, they soon leave the Twickenham Studios and abandon all sort of televised concert ideas (as well as other wacky proposals) to concentrate on creating new songs relocated now to their own Apple Studio on Savile Row where their moods brightens considerably. This process will culminate with the songwriting and recording in just 22 days of the Let It Be album together with the iconic Apple rooftop concert.
It never ceases to amaze me how it has taken more than 50 years for us to watch these 8 hours (which fell short for me), taken out of more than 60 hours of video and 150 hours of audio. Get Back is an extraordinary film because it offers us a window from which to look directly at the life of the Beatles and their closest people and family, while they were immersed in the composition process at a vital time in the lives of John, Paul, George and Ringo, shortly before their paths parted forever.
Up until now we had believed things such as that in those sessions Paul had brought out his more authoritarian side, that Yoko had invaded the vital space of the Beatles irreversibly splitting the group, and that the absence of their manager Brian Epstein and the appearance of someone like Allan Klein had blown up the balance among the Beatles. However, in addition to seeing an extraordinary group composing, recording and improvising, the documentary also shows us a very different reality than what we had been told. Thanks to Get Back we can see four friends laughing, having a good time, and even when they argue they do so with respect and patience. It even lets us see the figure of Yoko Ono from another point of view. Ultimately we see the Beatles reconnecting with each other, rather than separating.
For all this I think that although up to now there have been many documentaries in which the history of the Beatles has been shelled allowing us to know the facts, Get Back completely changes how we must face the end of the history of the Beatles. It's not that the footage released in the early 70s was wrong, it was simply incomplete. And it is still surprising that we have had to wait more than fifty years to realize it. Get Back is simply an extraordinary documentary about the Beatles because in it we find the essential.
