Details from IMDB:
Let It Be
The filmed account of The Beatles’ attempt to recapture their old group spirit by making a back-to-basics album, which instead drove them further apart.
Initial Thoughts:
I’m a Beatles fan, I haven’t been since I was a kid but the last 25 years for sure and I believe that they are perhaps the greatest rock band to have ever existed. So it was getting later on a Monday night and I realized I had never seen this short documentary, so I decided to give it a watch.
Main Points:
I haven’t watched something filmed in the 60s-70s in a while a long time and I had forgotten that anything back then was, often, done at a slower pace. I also quite enjoyed the added bit at the beginning where Peter Jackson interviewed the director, Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Peter Jackson is a massive Beatles fan and did an hour 7 hour documentary (3 episodes) from “Let it Be” unused footage, so as Michael says, “Let It Be” is the father to “Get Back”, which I’m sure is true. To get back to what I was saying, while I know movies from 40-50 years ago are often slower paced, that still doesn’t mean I won’t get bored and I’m afraid this was the case here.
I think this means I’m not the most massive Beatles fan but I found the first half hour to 45 minutes of the movie slow, some parts downright boring. I think a lot of this is because the director had to cut such a tremendous amount of footage out that what’s left behind often feels disjointed. That said it is very cool to see John, Paul, George and Ringo make one of the greatest albums of all time, it was great such to see them in their element too. You can see Paul as the perfectionist, John offering some humor, Ringo just happy to be there and George, while brilliant and often friendly, does show some tension/hostility towards the rest of the band, though most of it is cut out.
They sound great and the video has been cleaned up so it looks excellent too, it is wild to see them so young and to think about how tragic it is to have John taken from us so abruptly and of course George who left us way to soon at 58. I spent a lot of the movie waiting for the songs to come together and marveling at how music was done back then, for example with “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” a guy came in the studio and banged an anvil with a hammer!
Final Thoughts:
The rooftop concert towards the end is one of the greatest moments in Rock and Roll history and it’s so great to watch it. I wonder if the cops really would have shut it down if they played much longer, was that even real or could it have been staged? It is a sad truth that this intense creative period, which brought them back to basics, was to bring them closer together but they only drifted further apart and this was the last time they ever performed together. I enjoyed this documentary but I can only give it 7.5 out of 10, I don’t blame the director as he thought it would be a concert film. I would recommend it to any Beatles fan and can say it’s fine for kids!