Get Back Reviews

It's an old truism that the higher you fly, the further you fall. No musician has ever soared higher than Paul McCartney did in the 1960s, as the cutest and most tuneful of the Beatles. And, in the eyes of many, no pop star has ever plummeted so low. Directed by Richard Lester, the man responsible for A HARD DAY'S NIGHT and HELP!, GET BACK documents the graying ex-Beatle's recent world tour. Even diehard fans must face the fact that McCartney was a Beatle for only ten years, and has now been performing solo for two decades. The challenge Lester faced is obvious: how to make Paul exciting and wonderful again. And McCartney doesn't make it easy. While some 60s acts, like Dylan, try to remain as honest and contemporary as ever, and others, like the Beach Boys, are more than happy to exist as professional oldies bands, McCartney appears to want both. He fills his show with Beatles songs, playing up the nostalgia, with projected psychedelic imagery for "Sgt. Pepper," and big sing-a-longs on "Hey Jude," but at the same time plays his more recent tunes like "Put It There" and "Coming Up," wanting to be taken for the top-selling current draw that he is. Unfortunately, McCartney is such an inept performer that neither the old nor the new songs seem legit. When he pumps out the old Beatles songs, he seems to be lying: what right does this dork have to be singing these songs that meant so much to so many, pretending that he wrote them? And with the new ones, we get equally angry: how dare you put "Coming Up" on the same stage with "Eleanor Rigby"?! McCartney has been blessed with an incredible melodic sense, and often a lovely way with lyrics, but GET BACK demonstrates that, without an edge, a bite, his material seems flaccid. John Lennon, of course, provided that bite. So, with Lennon gone, what makes GET BACK so worthwhile? Lester, as it turns out, fills Lennon's shoes brilliantly. He goes along with McCartney's desire to be all things to all people, but pushes it to extremes. When the band plays Paul's timeless hymn "Long and Winding Road," Lester cuts to images of the moon missions, and of the Vietnam War. When they move on to the cute, current "Put It There," we watch the fall of the Eastern Bloc. But more importantly, Lester uses to advantage the fact that McCartney is such a dull, unimprovising performer. Unlike GIMME SHELTER and THE LAST WALTZ, this film isn't a record of one concert, the best cases of which work more as documentaries than as musicals, making the audience constantly feel the filmmaker's difficulty in catching all the right details in the event. Instead, Lester went around the world with McCartney, and filmed in many venues, many cities, many continents. And in cutting the film, Lester cheerfully intercuts between concerts--regardless of the size of the venue, the clothes the performers are wearing, even the types of film used. Since he clearly knew exactly where McCartney and each stage member would be onstage each night, he was able to get the perfect shot for each beat of each song. Whatever you think of McCartney, this is the best edited concert film ever made. Moreover, McCartney is smart enough to cover only Beatles songs that were primarily his, and not encroach on Lennon territory by attempting "Strawberry Fields" or "A Day in the Life." Yet he does sound awfully patronizing when he introduces "Let It Be" by dedicating it to "my buddies, George, Ringo and John, without whom it would not have been possible." And all of Lester's expertise can't change the fact that Paul's wife Linda is always there, shoved off to the side of the stage behind her synthesizer, with absolutely no stage presence or personality. Or the fact that Paul speaks so little, making the movie much more tiring than it otherwise would be. But when all's said and done, GET BACK is a superb document of a brilliant, erratic talent.