Peter Jackson’s tendency to excess in the footage is well known: his acclaimed trilogy of The Lord of the rings adds 9 hours in its commercial version and 11 in the extended version. Now the director gives us The Beatles: Get Back, which premieres this Thursday Disney +, an immersion of almost eight hours in the recording sessions of Let It Be in January 1969 from the filming of 22 days of work of the Fab Four. Jackson has said that he planned to do a single two-and-a-half-hour installment, but the pandemic gave him plenty of time to study, restore, edit and assemble material so overwhelming that it led to three full-length chapters.

The Beatles are under heavy pressure, uncomfortable by the cameras that watch them relentlessly, undecided about the direction they should take and, this is not so explicit, near the end. And yet, in just three weeks they are able to create the album’s songs from scratch. Let It Be and half of the next and last, Abbey Road; To top it off, we are shown all those that discard (a shame for the rhythmic and anti-racist Commonwealth, among others), and some that would end up in their first solo works (All Things Must Pass, Jealous Guy, Another Day).

Get Back It is an event for the history of popular music, because it brings to light a huge amount of unreleased Beatles material, the most relevant at least since the trilogy Anthology, 1995. And because it achieves all its objectives: to immerse the viewer in the rehearsal and recording room of the most important group of the 20th century, to observe the creative process of the most fertile couple that pop has produced. And at the same time show their complex personal relationships: the camaraderie typical of some boys who had been together since adolescence and had experienced something extraordinary in just seven years, but in which the wear of success and the centrifugal tendency that will separate them only a few can be seen. months later.

Crafts

It is an impeccable and raw production, in which just a few subtitles and a few archive images put context to what the Beatles are doing in that time and place. For music lovers, the hook is to attend the craftsmanship of each song: one brings a melody, plays it and hums it because he has not written the lyrics, the others help to tune it over many sessions, until it takes shape and ends. sounding round, perfect. One day Lennon is late and McCartney improvises a riff while singing, in a message to his absent companion: “Go back to where you remain.” Thus was born the song that gives the film its title. For mythomaniacs, the hook is that kind of Big Brother with the Beatles, which allows us to observe how a voyeur an enthusiastic McCartney trying to establish himself as a leader; a Lennon sometimes distant, other times sarcastic and funny; an irritable Harrison who feels neglected by his peers in his creative prime; to a Ringo Starr who avoids conflicts and is comfortable in his low profile. It is observed, and this is new, that the chemistry between John and Paul works until the end: they understand, respect and complement each other; that coincides with George emerging as an author. And there are Yoko Ono as the ubiquitous intruder (the movie avoids portraying her as the villain), Linda McCartney with her daughter Heather, keyboardist Billy Preston as the fifth. beatle from this stage, the producer George Martin and an entire army of engineers, producers, cameras, consultants, photographers that swarm the studios.

Jackson worked from about 60 hours of filming and 150 hours of sound, a material kept under lock and key since he was registered for the film Let It Be, 1970. Putting it all together was a monumental effort that forced even to read his lips so that everything would fit; the result is dazzling in its visual and sound quality. That first film directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, like the album of the same name, was published when the dissolution of the band had already been announced and each of them began their solo career. That is why it is considered the chronicle of the end of the Beatles, but in reality it was not his last work, but Abbey Road, recorded, no longer cameras, months later.

A bit of context: In January 1969, a year and a half has passed since the death of Brian Epstein, the manager who had cared for them; They have returned from a failed spiritual retreat in India; they just released the white album (The Beatles), that marks his return to the simplicity of the rock and roll after his psychedelic stage. They have not performed live for three years, a very fertile period in which they raised their artistic ambition. Having simplified their sound, in search of the essences, makes them think about going up on stage again. More things were changing: Lennon was already attached to Yoko Ono and demanded that she be constantly and literally by his side; seemed less involved in the common project (he had just collaborated with the Stones on Rock and Roll Circus; Before the official separation he had already given two concerts with Ono and Eric Clapton). McCartney has clearly taken over the reins of the band, but his leadership is disputed, openly by Harrison and more subtly by John. They also have differences about who and how should manage their business.

Jackson’s film shows, at first, a somewhat lost Beatles. They are given a period of 22 weeks for a project that they are not clear about. It is surprising that they agreed to be filmed at all hours, often with the cameras and microphones turned on when no one else was in the studio (they say the red light on the lens was obscured). We hear their conversations, their doubts, their moments of relaxation and anger. They plan to reappear in a television special, as Elvis Presley had done the year before, but it was never held. And, above all, they want to go back to live and make it big. They handle different formulas very seriously, the most delirious to embark with the public in England and sail to Libya to perform in an ancient Roman theater by the sea.

The inspiration for the new songs does not come alone: ​​they spend a lot of time improvising, turning each idea around, doing covers (especially Chuck Berry and other early rock and roll classics; they try to go back to the roots, to what they did in Hamburg), instruments are exchanged from time to time (they all go through drums and piano); they even try to recover songs that they wrote very young. Whoever reaches the third chapter will see where this seemingly chaotic process led. The idea of ​​a mass concert takes a turn and ends in a modest but great surprise performance of just over 40 minutes on the roof of the Apple Corps building in central London, only for those who pass by, until it arrives the police and order to stop. That performance is fully recovered; It’s amazing that the next day, after the project is finished, they go back to the studio and are already talking about the next songs they will record.

Quarrels, bewilderment and talent

The Let It Be 1970 was a technically somewhat rudimentary documentary that has not been reissued for decades and never had a digital version. Most of the footage, 80 minutes, is taken by the songs they perform in the studio and their last live performance. But it already includes moments of merriment and quarrels, among them the famous discussion between Paul and George in which he ends up saying: “I’ll play as you want and I won’t play if you don’t want to.” On Get BackHowever, we have a full account of that crisis. Tired of feeling humiliated by Paul, George replies at another point: “You need Eric Clapton.” He takes the door and goes to Liverpool; it will take six days to be persuaded to return. In that period Lennon says to McCartney that yes, we should still call Clapton. We perceive their bewilderment. We overhear a cafeteria conversation in which John reproaches Paul for correcting others so much, but then does not admit to anyone telling him about his arrangements. Paul admits to John: you were the boss here, but I’ve had to be the boss these two years and it’s hard for me. Months later, Lennon would consider it a betrayal that it was McCartney who announced the end of the Beatles, his band, John’s.

It has been said that Let It Be is a bitter chronicle of the end of the Beatles, and that Jackson’s goal with Get Back It was to recover a more luminous version of that time, to show that despite the friction they were united, had a good time together, and were committed to his monumental work. Actually, neither Let It Be it’s so bleak neither Get Back so festive. In both productions we see lights and shadows. What happens is that Get Back it dwells in full detail on episodes that only in passing peek into the 1970 film or were omitted. This new version of that material was necessary because in its day it was not considered opportune to take advantage of it with this ambition. It was the Beatles themselves who prevented a wider distribution of the film Let It Be, because they were not satisfied with the image it gave of them. They won an Oscar (for best soundtrack) that they didn’t pick up. It turns out that, seen a much longer account of those 22 days, conflicts are not the protagonists, although there are, but the extraordinary talent of some youngsters (they had not reached 30 years of age) for whom three weeks are enough to do everything.

The objection that may be raised Get Back is that it is made by a fan and aimed at the fans. Not all audiences will appreciate hearing eight different versions of the same song, seeing it grow throughout the footage. Extension can be dissuasive; perhaps it would have been more digestible in six or seven chapters of just over an hour.

Coinciding with the premiere, the book has been published The Beatles: Get Back (Dome), with texts by Jackson himself, large photos and the transcription, day by day, of all the dialogues that appear in the documentary. In addition, the Universal record company has launched a special boxed edition super deluxe from the album Let It Be, which includes 27 unpublished recordings of which have now come to light.

Disney + culminates with this launch its commitment to the Beatles as a franchise, in the style of what it has done with Star Wars or Marvel; fortunately he is exploiting it with much more care. The same platform has already released McCartney 3, 2, 1, a miniseries for music lovers in which Paul and producer Rick Rubin dissect some of their songs. Clearly it is McCartney who controls the story of who the Beatles were today, but the time that has elapsed allows him to look back with good judgment, because the clashes of egos are not so irritating half a century later. Peter Jackson has worked according to the living beatles and the widows of the deceased, but he claims to have decided with complete freedom. Get Back complete as we no longer expected the enormous legacy of The Beatles in the history of music.

You can follow EL PAÍS TELEVISIÓN on Twitter or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.