Peter Jackson and his editing team seem to have overlooked that The Beatles were a music group so the editing of this documentary is pretty much a living nightmare.
There are enough statements here about how fantastic the filmed material looks - really unbelievably good - but also how long and boring this documentary gets.
But as a great Beatles admirer I found that stuff interesting - e.g. I really enjoyed the 28 hour (!) "Beatles Anthology Revisited" audio documentary - but I have to admit that even I got tired about halfway through Part 2.
But the main reason for this IMHO is the misconception about the theme of the whole project and I assume for any casual viewer that likes The Beatles MUSIC this documentary will be pretty much unwatchable.
But even for many hardcore fans this might be a major letdown - as in the end it was for me - and here are at least in my opinion some of the main reasons for this:
In fact there's hardly any (if at all, but I might be forgetting one or the other here) complete performances from the Twickenham or Apple rehearsals / sessions. Then again a mediocre Blues Suede Shoes excerpt from Part 2 is repeated in Part 3. Here I think the editor completely lost sight of the project.
The flow of the whole rooftop performance is constantly interrupted by changes in the sound mix, mainly to "accommodate" various camera positions, and by street interviews and discussions with the police, much more that in the original Let It Be film.
So the focus on the rooftop performance is never on the performance but on the overall situation.
Still The Beatles were a music group. And this performance should be the absolute highlight of the movie (it still is but that's due to the band being so good that you cannot take away from that even with the worst of sound mixing/editing choices).
The only reason for some of the above mentioned omissions/edits of major performances could be that the filmmakers didn't want to make the original "Let It Be" movie completely obsolete but that doesn't explain why the official released 45 versions of "Get Back" and "Don't Let Me Down" are also edited to merely snippets.
I remember getting really excited when I started to recognize the matching takes which I didn't even expected to see, only to be let down again by another hard edit.
And for the final filming session for the last 3 songs to be played during the 6 minutes or so end credits was really the final nail in the coffin for this misguided film project.
With these omissions there is not even a chance to do a re-editing of the film so one can only hope for complete performances of the above mentioned tracks and maybe the whole uniterupted rooftop performance as bonus features on the BluRay release.
But after seeing the outtake choices for the latest remix projects of Sgt. Pepper, The White Album, Abbey Road and Let It Be I really have not much hope.
So thank God for the original Let It Be movie - which hopefully will be a cleaned-up/restored bonus BluRay feature - and who would have thought one could still say this after this Get Back project was announced.
What a shame.
There are enough statements here about how fantastic the filmed material looks - really unbelievably good - but also how long and boring this documentary gets.
But as a great Beatles admirer I found that stuff interesting - e.g. I really enjoyed the 28 hour (!) "Beatles Anthology Revisited" audio documentary - but I have to admit that even I got tired about halfway through Part 2.
But the main reason for this IMHO is the misconception about the theme of the whole project and I assume for any casual viewer that likes The Beatles MUSIC this documentary will be pretty much unwatchable.
But even for many hardcore fans this might be a major letdown - as in the end it was for me - and here are at least in my opinion some of the main reasons for this:
- Two Of Us (Fast Version) - chopped to an excerpt
- Get Back (45/LP Version) - chopped to an excerpt
- Don't Let Me Down (45 Version) - chopped to an excerpt
- For You Blue - chopped to an excerpt
- Rock 'n' Roll Medleys - chopped to excerpts (Rip It Up + intro & Lawdy Miss Clawdy completely missing)
- no complete version of neither Let It Be nor The Long And Winding Road or Two Of Us
In fact there's hardly any (if at all, but I might be forgetting one or the other here) complete performances from the Twickenham or Apple rehearsals / sessions. Then again a mediocre Blues Suede Shoes excerpt from Part 2 is repeated in Part 3. Here I think the editor completely lost sight of the project.
- I've Got A Feeling (fantastic 1st Rooftop Version) - several Times interrupted by dialogue, mainly with police personel - at this point you might even call the movie: PC Ray Dagg Gets Back.
The flow of the whole rooftop performance is constantly interrupted by changes in the sound mix, mainly to "accommodate" various camera positions, and by street interviews and discussions with the police, much more that in the original Let It Be film.
So the focus on the rooftop performance is never on the performance but on the overall situation.
Still The Beatles were a music group. And this performance should be the absolute highlight of the movie (it still is but that's due to the band being so good that you cannot take away from that even with the worst of sound mixing/editing choices).
The only reason for some of the above mentioned omissions/edits of major performances could be that the filmmakers didn't want to make the original "Let It Be" movie completely obsolete but that doesn't explain why the official released 45 versions of "Get Back" and "Don't Let Me Down" are also edited to merely snippets.
I remember getting really excited when I started to recognize the matching takes which I didn't even expected to see, only to be let down again by another hard edit.
And for the final filming session for the last 3 songs to be played during the 6 minutes or so end credits was really the final nail in the coffin for this misguided film project.
With these omissions there is not even a chance to do a re-editing of the film so one can only hope for complete performances of the above mentioned tracks and maybe the whole uniterupted rooftop performance as bonus features on the BluRay release.
But after seeing the outtake choices for the latest remix projects of Sgt. Pepper, The White Album, Abbey Road and Let It Be I really have not much hope.
So thank God for the original Let It Be movie - which hopefully will be a cleaned-up/restored bonus BluRay feature - and who would have thought one could still say this after this Get Back project was announced.
What a shame.