A Close Read of the Beatles in “Get Back”

I suspect that no one—truly, no one—could have imagined the success of the new Beatles documentary, “Get Back,” the director Peter Jackson’s recut of the footage shot in January of 1969 that produced the dim documentary “Let It Be.” After having taken on the task of reshaping our entire conception of the First World War in his previous “updated” documentary, “They Shall Not Grow Old,” Jackson has now taken on the harder task of reconstructing our view of Paul’s quarrel with George over the guitar riffs in “Two of Us.” Even so: nearly eight hours of guys making desultory passes at old songs, painfully constructing new ones through hours of repetition and the testing of tentative lyrics—“Is Tucson in Arizona?” John checks with Paul as they write “Get Back”—all the while mildly bickering and talking past one another in a family broth of warm memories and clouded quarrels? Really? Only the remaining coterie of grizzled Beatles fans, surely, would respond. But the documentary works and, apparently, has been an astonishing success both in the numbers of people who have watched it and the number of responses it has provoked.

Source: Adam Gopnik/newyorker.com

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