‘Get Back’ studies how The Beatles wrote music

Above : The Beatles featured in a climactic scene of the Peter Jackson documentary “Get Back.” (Photo/Disney+)

Movie review : “Get Back,” directed by Peter Jackson, featuring John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, George Martin, Glyn Johns, Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Streaming on Disney+.

High school tends to separate everyone into groups. In my era, when it came to music, that tended to mean those who preferred The Beatles and those who preferred The Rolling Stones. Pardon the pun, but some of us preferred to seek “Satisfaction” rather than purchase, say, a “Ticket to Ride.”

Eventually, though, The Beatles won most of us over. If not by the album “Beatles ’65” then certainly by “Rubber Soul,” which contains “In My Life,” John Lennon’s hauntingly poetic evocation of a love song – and about as far from the simple sentiments of “She Loves You” as is possible to get.

The group’s development as songwriters only grew from there – through “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “The White Album” and “Abbey Road” and such songs as “A Day in the Life,” “Back in the USSR,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Come Together” and “Something.”

It all culminated in “Let It Be,” which few of us at the time could believe was the end. But by that album’s release, on May 8th, 1970 – less than two weeks before Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s documentary feature bearing the same title began screening in theaters – it was clear: The Beatles were no more.

What the four – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Richard Starkey (AKA Ringo Starr) – would leave behind was a wealth of music, some of the 20th century’s best. Certainly some of the most influential. But, too, because of Lindsay-Hogg’s movie, they would leave us with the feeling that their friendship, so apparent in Richard Lester’s feature film “A Hard Day’s Night,” had succumbed to infighting and backbiting.

And for many of us, including New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson , that was disappointing. So imagine Jackson’s surprise, and sense of delight, when he discovered that rather than the mere 80 mostly dour minutes that Lindsay-Hogg included in his documentary, there were some 60 hours of total footage, not to mention an additional 150-odd hours of audio recordings.

Jackson, working with the Walt Disney Studio and a range of producers – including McCartney, Starr and Ono among others – went ahead with plans to pare all that material down to a longer, more inclusive documentary feature, not unlike his 2018 World War I film “They Shall Not Grow Old.” In fact, Jackson would use some of the same techniques from that project to make the 50-year-old footage look as if it had been shot – again, pardon the pun – yesterday. In addition, Jackson would include scenes that, in fairness, Lindsay-Hogg had been prevented by The Beatles’ own Apple corporation from using.

When the idea for a single feature fell apart, Jackson opted to make a three-part documentary series, running to nearly eight hours, for presentation on Disney+. The result, titled “Get Back,” is both a revelation and something that is bound to appeal largely to the most loyal Beatles fans.

As Jackson makes clear, the group in 1969 was facing a deadline. They and those around them – including filmmaker Lindsay-Hogg, their long-time producer George Martin and recording engineer Glyn Johns – had been debating what the next project would be. Plans for Lindsay-Hogg’s movie to end with a television special were eventually abandoned. But the group had an album to produce, songs to write, rehearse and record, all to be finished in two weeks before Starr would leave to make the movie “The Magic Christian.”

So with Lindsay-Hogg’s cameras running, we see the four showing up first in the warehouse-like Twickenham Studios – some earlier than others, some far more ready to work than others – sorting through musical ideas that would become songs such as “Don’t Let Me Down” and, of course, “Get Back.”

While much of the footage shows them talking, smoking, drinking tea, clowning (especially Lennon and Starr), at times arguing and only occasionally playing, it also captures a mood that is far lighter than we were led to believe. Too, it becomes clear that Ono was unfairly blamed. She didn’t cause the break-up: Their desire to follow individual paths was to blame.

And if some minutes, if not hours of Jackson’s series could have been cut, the final rooftop concert he ends with makes it all worthwhile. The 42-minute set the lads from Liverpool perform reminds us just how good they were when they put all their differences aside and just got down and played rock ’n’ roll.

An edited version of this review was previously broadcast on Spokane Public Radio.