Cobbled, constructed and collated from over 20 hours of footage shot by Michael Lindsey Hogg over fifty years ago, Peter Jackson’s Get Back may very well be not only one of the biggest events in music on film, but music in general. Edited to perfection and punctuated naturally by some of the finest songs ever written, Get Back is a fly on the wall chronicle like no other – without vanity, without removal and clearly without a clarity on privacy from Hogg – we have been granted ultimately with a Beatles text for the ages and most possibly the greatest music documentary ever made.
Let’s discuss length. Ooh Matron. (Actually a cheap joke that befits an awful lot of the absurdist ribbing and jibes that the band enjoy in-between and often during practising and composition). We in this case have an exact counterpoint to compare this with when it comes to the under 90 minute film Let It Be, directed by Michael Lindsey Hogg (who makes an on-going hilarious occurring role in this) and edited by Graham Gilding and Tony Lenny. An 81 minute feature made from the same footage here that fails to capture close to any of the specificity and craft that this event does in spades. One need only look at selection and ponder for a great length of time how Hogg had in his hands footage of the exact moment that the song Get Back and multiple others were composed and failed to use it in his film. Here the length allows for an absolute exploration and documented depiction of how this specific selection of songs were created, showing all the creative turmoil’s, highs and lows that the band went through over that period of thirty days or so, culminating with the ultimate climax with the iconic roof concert that would define an era and mark the last Beatles public performance. Such facts and figures are marked throughout Jackson’s event film with title cards from time to time that notate to the audience certain things perhaps not known to the viewer. The film even opens with a ten minute montage explaining and prefacing the film with The Beatles history and legacy up until the point this film starts, which is a little bit un-nesscerary for me personally, but of course not everybody has done The Beatles Museum tour multiple times (that I certainly would recommend also). Either way fan or not it’s a neat scene setter for the rest of the event we are about to see and only punctuates clearer the drastic changes that the band and its members have gone through over the course of a decade.
It deeply cannot be underestimated how emotional at times it is to see certain figures immortalised in this un-varnished document, it is a vision of love shared by couples, it is a vision of friendship, it is a vision of creativity, it is a vision of pure craft, it is a vision of so many things, forever, now, caught in amber like no other musical documentary has caught in such an expansive way yet. For an eight hour event to have you still be clamouring for more is a miracle in itself, but frankly nothing word-wise can befit this piece of film better than the word “event” in-fact, who would have ever thought that this would all come out as good as it did and that we would ever receive such a bounty of footage so well handled and poured over as this is in the first place. This is a love letter to icons and fan or not one simply can’t help but feel drawn in and astounded and amazed by the power of the footage that you are witnessing.
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A 10/10 event that defies description and only warrants the most bold of hyperbole. Fundamentally this is a text for the fans. I know many non-Beatles fans who I’m sure would find this insufferable, however for even the most passive of fan this only fuels further the mythos and legendary status of almost undoubtedly the greatest band of all time. Peter Jackson has formulated and constructed a piece of both immense quality and, to put it plainly, impossibility. When it was first announced one would be remiss to say that they would actually wish to watch close to 8 hours of The Beatles eating toast and drinking tea, but now one can’t help but wish to watch the entirety of the footage.
P.S. I have found a new form of torture, more annoying than anything I’ve known before. Watching The Beatles practise songs trying to find lyrics that will become immortal and iconic for all time, and fans are just screaming at the screen.
- - Thomas Carruthers
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