ABOVE AVERAGE

Covering The Beatles at work on their final studio album, the 1970 documentary Let It Be depicted a band on the verge of breaking up, ending with the now legendary, unannounced 1969 rooftop concert in central London, which attracted unwelcome attention from the police.

Peter Jackson’s intention with this miniseries was to take all the unused footage from the film and show the world that even though there was tension between individual Beatles there was also a lot of love and a familial camaraderie, with band members clearly having fun. The running time is a challenge, but watching these icons in the middle of their creative process is fascinating.

The crisply restored footage erases a 50-year distance to these people and events.

2021-U.K.-New Zealand-U.S. 468 min. Color. Directed by Peter Jackson. Editing: Jabez Olssen. 

Trivia: Originally shown in three episodes. Co-produced by Jackson, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Yoko Ono. Peter Sellers makes an appearance. A portion of the series was released theatrically in the U.S. as The Beatles: Get Back – The Rooftop Concert.

Last word: “From the point of view of the four Beatles, I think we learn more about their personalities and who they were as human beings, because they’re reacting to things going wrong rather than reacting to things all working out well. It’s when you’re dealing with a crisis that you actually learn a bit more about the people that you’re watching… The fact that it never really quite happened the way they planned it, as a dramatist, I’m quite grateful for that, to be honest.” (Jackson, Variety)