The Series Project: The Beatles (Part 2)

Ringo Starr is still making records to this very day, as is Paul McCartney. George Harrison has solo records, converted to Hinduism, produced films (including Time Bandits) and died of cancer a few years ago. John Lennon made several solo records with Yoko Ono, was a notable peace activist and pacifist, and was infamously murdered in 1980. They were The Beatles of rock ‘n’ roll. Buy some of their records. No, you can’t buy just one. Unless it’s one of the many multiple-record box sets that have rolled out of the rock machine in the intervening years.

It’s tempting to call The Beatles’ movies a microcosm of their career, but I’m not sure if they fit. They may serve as a microcosm if you know a lot about their music, their influence, and the relationships with one another, but they don’t stand alone. To reiterate, I am no rock historian, so I can only go by what I see in the films. What I have are five immensely different feature films that all claim to be an analysis of the Fab Four, and don’t offer up any sort of historical continuity in themselves. I sense that the feature films were more footnotes to an otherwise stellar music career, and not the ultra-successful cinema endeavors of a band trying to do something interesting with the cinematic form. The Beatles were not filmmakers, and the filmmakers who worked with them were beholden to their myth. As such, none of the films can give a pure and clean version of the band.