A Documentary About a Documentary.

• Author: Gehring, Wes D.
• Position: The Beatles: Get Back

"THE BEATLES: GET BACK" (2021) is a documentary miniseries directed by Peter "Lord of the Rings" Jackson, with a running time approaching eight hours. It originally was released in three installments on Disney + in late 2021, with the much shorter "Rooftop Concert" edition given a limited IMAX theater release in January. Disney then began streaming it in February. However, after a major delay, it only became generally available as a DVD in mid July.

Jackson has called it "a documentary about a documentary," because he constructed it from 60-plus hours of footage shot by filmmaker/artist Michael Lindsay-Hogg for his own 1970 documentary of the same name. The former film ran well under two hours and has been unavailable for decades. Each documents three early 1969 weeks of Beatles studio sessions towards producing the album "Let It Be" (which had the working title "Get Back"). The "Let It Be" album's delayed release did not occur until May 1970, almost a month after the group's break-up.

The Beatles write and rehearse 14 songs while planning for their first live performance in years during this recording session. The ideas for the live event topper to their work are progressively scaled back. What starts as a quasi-epic showcase in some ancient ruins outside England eventually becomes the modest but unforgettable London rooftop concert above their studio. The catalyst for revisiting this production, beyond all things Beatles being of interest, was to challenge the longtime belief that the original documentary was badly marred by the tension among members of the band. The first documentary came to be seen as more the chronicling of a band going south than the creation of an album. So, how does Jackson's miniseries compare?

First, I would concur overall with the almost universal critical praise given the miniseries. However, some important points are missed and/or marginalized in coverage of Jackson's "Get Back." Most importantly, it still plays like a band breaking up. Its extreme length simply makes Paul McCartney come across as less of a taskmaster. To Jackson's credit, he has retained the most painful sequence from Lindsay-Hoggs' picture, in which McCartney repeatedly corrects George Harrison on how he wants a musical sequence played. The broken Harrison is reduced to saying, "I will play it this way or that way or however you want." Nonetheless, Harrison briefly quits the band, and must be implored (unfilmed) back.

While John Lennon was...