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The Dictator

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The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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George Harrison: Living In The Material World (Film)

by Julian Wood | October 19, 2011 15:36 | Edited October 19, 2011 15:38

Modest and leisurely, albeit exhaustive and insightful, this would have been even better with extended music sequences.

Martin Scorsese is a great filmmaker and a great fan of the music of his generation. As with his documentaries and commentaries on film and filmmakers, he brings his own seriousness and accomplishment to any tribute he does. He has already made a significant documentary about Dylan (No Direction Home) and the wonderful Stones movie Shine A Light, and, of course, his The Last Waltz is still the benchmark for all concert films. Now he turns his lens on the whole Beatles phenomenon.

 

The film is actually about George Harrison but how much can separate the man or musician from that era and that group? As George suggests on camera, once you have been in the most famous (and successful) pop/rock group of all time everything else will be coloured by that.

 

Harrison is famous for having followed a spiritual path. Of all the mop-tops he was the one that realised that all things - including uber-fame and, eventually life itself - must pass. When he died of cancer about a decade ago he was still in middle age. Still, he had done a hell of a lot (not least being personally bankrolling Handmade Films, which made cult classics such as Withnail & I, and the Python movies like Life of Brian) and left a wonderful legacy.

 

Like the Buddha himself, Harrison had indulged in an excess of pleasure and found it wanting. He was finally driven to a deepened spirituality by trying everything else first. And what a ride it was, from working class Liverpool to being one of the most famous faces on Earth. One thing you get from Scorsese's leisurely and yet committed-to-detail three hour marathon is just how monster the Beatles actually were. As Ringo says - in one of the scores of illuminating interviews from famous musicians and collaborators - you spend all your life striving to get to this place (fame and wealth etc) only to find that you can never turn it off again. "That's the deal," he says, and you know it is lived-wisdom.

 

Scorsese is not tricksy at all here; he has chosen to take a relatively conventional biographical approach. The story is actually well known and all he needs is to illustrate it skilfully.

 

We see George being initially outshone by the blazing genius of Lennon and McCartney, the experimentation with drugs, the post-Beatles flowering, the friendship and rivalry with Clapton, the Maharishi years, inventing the idea of the first world-wide charity concert, and so on. Scorsese gets great archival footage and edits seamlessly. If there would be one complaint from a music fan, it is that he doesn't let the performing sections go on long enough. Still, maybe we are not meant to have absolutely everything. It wouldn't be good for us.

 

Photo by Jean-Marie Perier