'The Beatles: Get Back' (2021)

That End Of An Era, Half A Century Ago

Thanks to this lousy Covid infection I had the time to sit through the 3 part documentary put together by Peter Jackson. As with any historic document from the era, the power to evoke the era's ambience is powerful. There was even one moment Paul McCartney mentions the 1968 Hong Kong Flu pandemic, and somehow that felt really quant.  

I have a soft spot for all the stuff in the film. The Beatles, the 1960s, the equipment, the look of the fashion, the mood on the streets, the cars, the ambience. All of it. So it's a relatively easy thing to take it all in but I do wonder how much of this would make sense to somebody who grew up with the internet and mobile phones. They try calling John but his phone remains off the hook. They sort of give up on phoning him - no messages are left. What kind of technological Dark Ages were they doing this in?

Jokes aside, the overall elegiac feeling is that the 1960s are coming to a close, like it or lump it. Somewhere on the horizon is the feeling that The Beatles just can't keep going on. They don't see the drama that is about to engulf the management of the band and their company, Apple Corps. All of that is in their future; for the present, they are trying to play themselves into shape for an unknown outcome. 

What's Good About It

The documentary delivers a pretty comprehensive account of how the Beatles worked, and captures a vast trove of communication between the members. It is not clear for a long time if the Beatles are heading towards any particular outcome beyond doing another album, but as the episodes progress, there is an accelerating feel of cohesion that climaxes on the rooftop concert.

We get a pretty good view of the side players like Glynn Johns, Mal Evans, George Martin, and their respective roles in keeping The Beatles functioning. Mostly, it is the nuanced dynamic of the members that we come to understand, and it blows away all the conjectured theories about why The Beatles broke up, that have plagued us since the day they split up. The story is a lot more nuanced than that - and in some ways very difficult to articulate. To see the interpersonal dynamic between these people was priceless.

What's Bad About It

It's really long. I wondered if it really was worth sitting through the 3rd jam on 'Blue Suede Shoes'. 

It could have been chopped into 6 parts and still been equally compelling. I had to stop each episode somewhere in the middle just to get a rest and have a think about what I was watching. 

Peter Jackson must have an elephant's bladder. 

What's Interesting About It

All of it is interesting if you like the Beatles. I imagine it's a weird kind of torture if you don't. My significant other couldn't possibly sit through all of this because she does not like the Beatles at all. But if you're a fan, this series is a must. 

It's basically a story of how The Beatles pull out an album's worth of material in under a month - with a week missing in there because George quits at the end of week 2. It's impressive how quickly they work up the outline of the material but equally impressive is how they spend long days honing the arrangements and working out the harmonies. We know where the end point is and how the songs go and for the vast majority of the time we see those songs in a very loose state as they feel their way towards a solid arrangement.

Some of the songs are not quite right as they close out rehearsals the day before the rooftop concert, but miraculously, the versions with which we are so familiar, manifest themselves on the winter rooftop. It's so weird to see through to the Beatles' music in the hot molten state back through the history reification that has taken place to their music. 

Yoko Ono, International Woman Of Mystery

Yoko does stick out. Apart from the wives and girlfriends, the inner circle surrounding the Beatles is pretty blokey. Billy Preston turns up and his blackness is in stark contrast to the essential whiteness of London 1969. That was the world then, and therefore all the more reason why it is so strange to see Yoko Ono in that space.

There's a funny bit where Linda brings in her daughter Heather who watches Yoko do her scream thing in an impromptu jam. I'm sure it adds fuel for the people who want another reason to hate on Yoko. The next thing you know, Heather is copying Yoko's screams into the microphone. It's delightful, charming and funny.  

In most part she seems to sit there quietly taking it all in, reading her Japanese magazines. With everything going in the series, it's abundantly clear that the Beatles did not split up because Yoko turned up. 

Take These Broken Wings And Learn To Fly

A wag out there on the internet made the observation that the problem with The Beatles at this point in their career is that McCartney is trying to do a dress run for Wings, and the other members simply do not want to be subjected to this project. It's funny, but also a bit unfair. We can clearly see George is chafing under Paul's hectoring instructions because he has his own creative needs that are burgeoning quickly. At the same time we see John is drifting deeper into Yoko and drugs, politics and activism. Keeping the Beatles together is a Herculean task of the will. It is clear by the effort McCartney puts in that Wings, which follows the demise of The Beatles is his second option given he cannot keep The Beatles going.

The truly amazing thing about the Beatles between 1967 and 1970 might be how much good stuff they manage to produce. There's Sgt Peppers, followed by Magical Mystery Tour. Then there's the magnum opus of 1968, The White Album; and all the while they are producing enough single to fill yet another disc of its own (which got released as 'Hey Jude' in America) and then the Let it Be sessions followed by Abbey Road. That's 7 discs in 3 years 6 months. It might be the most productive 3 years and 6 months of any band ever. 

After their break up, the respective Beatles keep the pace up until about 1982. John Produces 7 albums, 5 of which take place between 1970 and 1975 plus Double Fantasy and his posthumous Milk & Honey. Paul produces 11 albums up until 1982's 'Tug of War'. He does more after that but it doesn't seem to belong to the same creative impulse after 1982. George produces 7 albums 9 discs up to 1982's 'Gone Troppo'. Even Ringo produces 8 albums up to 1981. It's a lot of work, and you have to figure if they tried doing it as The Beatles, they would have been pumping out double albums every year between 1970 and 1982 or so. 

Granted, not even half of it is good, but it is still a lot of music. It's easy to argue contractual obligations and grubby commercial incentives led to this overproduction, but it highlights the extraordinary nature of the Let it Be sessions for what they were, a band at the peak of their powers grinding out the hits. It's an inside look at the sausage factory of the best band of the 1960s doing their thing - and we are grateful to be able to witness so much of it.  

The Smallness Of Rock History

Because I grew up in the era, Rock music seemed like it was this gigantic social artistic phenomenon and movement. Of course, this might have been overstated. Rock goes from Chuck Berry and Elvis to the debut of the Beatles in a mere 7 years. Then the Beatles define recorded music with their own stamp for 7 years. Afterwards, it is a short 5-6 years until Punk emerges and from there it is a short 3 years before New Wave. When you consider the longevity of a band like The Foo Fighters today, you sort of have to marvel at the how quickly Rock music's market and target demographics moved through the genre. 

At each juncture, rock added an extra digit of global fans. Rock music had tens of thousands in the early days. That became hundreds of thousands during the Sixties, and then became millions in the maturation phase. This compounding growth of its fans clouds our appreciation of what The Beatles were to their peers as well as fans in real time, through the 1960s. Today the music landscape cannot encompass a fan base as broad and deep as The Beatles commanded. This series goes a long way to casting some light on the breadth and depth of their impact. 

The Beatles And Reification

If one thing works to the disadvantage of the music by The Beatles today, it is that through 60 years of their music being in the public sphere has led to a fixing of meaning. The people know the catalogue well have had so much time to settle upon the personal meaning of these songs. Those who do not know the catalogue well are confronted by a gigantic cultural icon replete with generational zeitgeist of sometime in the middle of the last century. What this means is that it is actually quite hard to have a fresh, fluid vantage point on the meaning of The Beatles' song catalogue. The entirety of the project has become fixed in the public consciousness like World War II or Seinfeld.

As such, it is interesting to be confronted by alternative readings of the famous songs as they are being worked up. Suddenly the meaning of a song like Get Back is not fixed in our minds on the basis of having heard it for 50-odd years. It is a song that is seeing a dynamic process of creation unfolding in front of us. What this presents is an opportunity - a rare one at that - to remove ourselves from our own sense of the reified art that surrounds our perception of The Beatles' work. 

In that light, the documentary series is interesting in its ability to undo some of the reification that has taken place over the decades. I'm sure the marketing machine will think of new ways to re-package The Beatles and sell it to us all over again, but this might be the last time they find anything actually fresh and unexpected - and for that this series deserves more than a little commendation. 

  

'The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies'

Finally, The End Of The End Of the Beginning

The second run through Middle Earth with The Hobbit movies has been harder to take with the waiting between pictures, than the first time through with Lord of the Rings. The waiting got progressively worse even though these films were brought out on schedule. 'Desolation of Smaug' finished on such a cliff-hanger, waiting for the final instalment has been teeth grinding. Added to the fact that the rather slim book got stretched out to three movies in order to contextualise the entire Lord of the Rings cycle of movies, the added plots and sub-plots made the second film all but incomprehensible its own.

Well, this was the movie to end it all and complete the cycle across 6movies. It has been nearly a decade and a half since the original Lord of the Rings movie came out, and maybe we are all exhausted by all this wondrous Tolkien imagery and pageant and battle. Peter Jackson has said he does not have any rights to the other Tolkien material, so for him, this is the end of the line with Middle Earth. Those who wish for him to continue and pick stories out of the Silmarillion know not what they ask.

Uh, no spoiler alerts for a book this old being turned into a movie.

What's Good About It

It's pretty decisive. No loose ends. Everybody gets their hacks in and some go out in a blaze of glory. It's much better than how Star Wars 'Attack of the Clones' and 'Revenge of the Sith' close out the prequel. Maybe Jackson simply is a better director than Lucas. When all is said and done with this film, you don't feel like the whole thing was a missed opportunity, but that it leads in quite well to the earlier cycle.

What's Bad About It

The locale of the battle and its many faces gets really confusing, and some parts of the battle are simply left for dead so we ca concentrate on a bunch of action around the main characters - who miraculously have no trouble going from one part of the battle to another.

Some times they're just too crazy, and you're left thinking "If they can do that, why don't they just..."
It strains incredulity even though it is fantasy. Well, you know, there's fantasy and there's fantasy...

Also, I refuse to accept that Orcs bred for war are so easily dispatched.

What's Interesting About It

It would make no sense if you don't watch at least 'Desolation of Smaug' before walking in. You can't just watch this film and have it make its own sense. It's not a bad thing if you accept that it's a piece in a series films but it was like 5hours of viewing just to get through the no.2 and no.3 films in the story line. One sort of wonders if that is the kind of film making one just has to accept that it makes no sense its own.

I guess it's not a bad thing but they should at least tell you that you'd better brush up on your Hobbit-lore before walking in. The film kicks off with Smaug hitting Laketown turning it into a sea of fire. It's spectacular but would make no sense what is at stake if you can't remember who all these people are. It's a weird film that way. It's amazing that cinema has come to accept that you can make a 2hour movie that makes no sense internally as a stand alone, and still have it as a big hit.

Smaug Buys It

It's in the book, and yes it is the way it goes but Smaug for all his CGI magnificence buys a farm rather easily. Bard's shot with the Black Arrow is quite trilling, but you get the feeling that it's a bit of a letdown. The second film might have been better if they played it through to where Bard slays Smaug, and kicked off the third film from the dissension that takes place once the treasure is secured. As it is, they spend the better part of two movies building it up and then - bang, "lucky shot sir!" - and the villain presiding over the preceding 5hours of screen time is dead.

Smaug's problem is that he doesn't hold out until the Orcs and the Goblin mercenaries and the other things with wings arrive. He ventures out on his own and gets shot down on his own before the main event. Had he waited for the Orcs and the Goblins, concentrated his fire breath weapon on the ground troops, the bad guys would have had their day. He really is a rather stupid dragon.

It did remind me of Count Dooku. Count Dooku of course puts up a great fight at the end of 'Attack of the Clones' and you're led to believe he's a mighty Sith, and then somewhere in Act I of 'Revenge of the Sith', he gets cut down rather easily by Anakin Skywalker. It leaves a similar kind of "what-the-hell-was-all-that-fuss-about?" feeling. Of course, you can blame Jackson for lumping Smaug's demise into Act I of the third film instead of Act III of the second film. You can also blame Tolkien for being a bad dramaturg. But what Tokien really wanted to write about was 'the Treasure of the Sierra Madre' where Thorin goes all Humphrey Bogart, so maybe Smaug was the big MacGuffin.

Race Politics And Tolkien Part 6

I really like this film and the other films in this cycle but here's the thing... They're really racist and racialist.

I know the book is written that way by a guy who grew up in South Arica, in a time when it was okay to think like this, but the essentialism of the description of the character makes it really hard to discuss Tolkien without going into race discourse. The strangest takeaway this time is possibly how white-European Middle Earth is, combined across 6 films. It's not Vikings where you expect everybody to be white European by dint of time and place. This is a fantasy setting.

I feel like an idiot complaining about it, but Orcs are played by Marois - essentially assigned as the other. Even then you can't tell they're Maoris with all the CGI and special effects makeup. So all the humans are white except for a token asian woman extra in there (and we won't ask how she got there in the story, it's not important!), The Dwarves who are Demi-Human, are all white; The Elves are Hyper-White, Nazi-Delight; and the Orcs' skin tone is ... ghostly pale white.

It's a film where it's somebody's fantasy that there are only white people and white people concerns front and centre. And the excuse will be, "but it's loosely based on medieval Europe, of course it's only got white people." Well what's in the East of Middle Earth? Nothing good, and then the map peters out.

Maybe back in 2001when the first LOTR film came out, this kind of conception was okay. But in 2015, it sticks out like a sore thumb that Middle Earth is white as the driven snow. Tolkien and Jackson combined, offer no positive roles for blacks, hispanics, asians, south asians, indigenous peoples and Pacific Islanders or anybody else not white. In an era when Sylvester Stallone works really hard to include Jet Li and Terry Crews into his bunch of action has-beens, is this whiteness-galore all that great?

Yet, that's what sticks out. It's a bunch of films that puts on screen just how institutional racism and exclusion works.
I'm sorry I even have to write that, but it's painfully true of the whole genre spawned by Tolkien.

Tauriel's Love For Kili

A number of people objected when I characterised the love interest between Tauriel and Kili as interspecies sex. Let me just recap something here: Tauriel isn't any white beautiful woman, she's an elf.  Kill isn't some ruggedly handsome dude that's short, he's a Dwarf. Elves and Dwarves are not the same stock of anything. It's more like if Evangeline Lilly fell in love, not with a  ruggedly handsome short dude but an Orangutan. Maybe when Tauriel sheds tears for Kili's death at the end, it is more the tears of a pet owner shedding tears for a dead pet. That hurts, that's love too. But for it to be the kind of standard heterosexual movie love interest, we're really talking Pony the Orangutan and inter-species sex.

The only reason people don't see it immediately is because two white actors are playing the role. I'd be more impressed if they made this love interest stick with a Dwarf and an Orc and an Orc played by a white woman and a dwarf played by a black man. Then watch the furore.

Lovely Bones

A Sunny Trip Through Death

Peter Jackson can be a very strange film maker. He makes the immense 'Lord of the Rings' Trilogy which set a new bench mark in visionary film making, certainly for fantasy genre films and then turns around and says what he really wanted to do was do a remake of 'King Kong' and does exactly that. A glance over his previous films show that while he is an excellent film maker his strengths are in areas of film that draw on genre fiction. He's good with horror and suspense, and is particularly strong with characterisation when the imagination is involved.

One of his most interesting films to date is 'Heavenly Creatures' which coincidentally introduced a wider audience to the young Kate Winslet. He also produced the recent oddball film 'District 9' which had all the tropes of an American science fiction film, but performed with the vernacular of South Africa.

The man clearly knows what he's doing, so it would be crazy to do a double take on his choices, but it has to be said a movie based on a book set in the 1970s about the victims of serial killers in the afterlife is an oddball choice. You can see what drew him to the project but it's still very strange.

What's Good About It

One of the refrains here on this blog is that I like 1970s period pictures, whether it be 'Frost/Nixon' or 'American Gangster' or 'The Ice Storm'. There's always a hint of a society in upheaval and I am greatly sentimental about the time in history for the promises it held. I was rather disappointed by what followed, but the 1970s for a brief moment showed a glimpse of something that quickly disappeared in the 1980s.

There are lots of good things about this film apart from the period setting. The directing, the acting, the pace, the narrative are all very good. The production design is particularly good. Stanley Tucci is once again a standout. That dude is simply amazing.

What's Bad About It

The casting of Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz doesn't work for me. Neither does Susan Sarandon as the ditzy chain-smoking grandmother. It's not that they're bad, but in this instance the familiarity of their faces kept detracting from the story. Clearly this was an unconventional story so the sense of reality the audience could invest in was finely balanced. The thing that continuously dipped it towards disbelieve were the familiarity of the superstars.

Also, the hair. 1970s hairstyling should be coarse. Long, yes, but men should have coarse hair. Some should even have matty hair. Everybody looked like they showered twice a day using gobs of conditioner and blow-dried their hair, which is so post-New Wave and Duran Duran. I'm probably attuned to this because I recently watched parts of 'Bullit' and the whole of 'Thunderbolt and Lightfoot' and kept thinking wow, the hair on all those people looks so matty and coarse! Aah, the way we were!

What's Interesting About It

Peter Jackson must be the rare man who can make a story about a serial murders of young women by a psychotic serial killer, and turn it into a sunny uplifting move about death and loss. As such, he should be put in the genius category.

Does The Story Even Make Sense?

The story makes sense as some kind of emotional arc dealing with dying if you only knew you were dead, and there was an afterlife to sort it out. It's not quite a ghost movie because she doesn't really affect the outcome of anything, although some characters remain convinced of certain things. The story isn't about how she comes back as a ghost to help the living uncover her murderer. She doesn't come back as a ghost to exact revenge. The whole story that takes place in the in between world after Susie's death actually doesn't really impact on the living, but it's the space from where she narrates the story.

It's such a strange story when you stop to think about it, but you only do so when the whole thing has finished. I'm not sure the story actually is the story it presents itself as, although I'm not sure if that is quite the right take on it.

What's Othello Got To Do With It?

One of the bit references in the film to another film is to Lawrence Olivier's version of Othello. This was made particularly poignant because Susie's first and last love is an Indian boy who signs his love letter as The Moor. It's peculiar because Othello is possibly one of the most vexing of Shakespeare's plays today, and it is compounded in this instance by the blackface Lawrence Olivier putting in a particularly camp performance. I've seen the aid film and it's a morbid kind of torture to sit through.

Still, seeing that race relations get referred to obliquely in the text I have to confess it is one of the better moments in the story, which goes back to the book. It also goes back to something about the 1970s when such crossings were far more feasible on a personal level. I have to say the world has backed off that one significantly since then, while making profuse excuses about backing away.