The Beatles Plus 50 It was fifty years ago today…

So we finally finished watching Get Back last night, and I find myself in the peculiar position of being glad it’s over. Not that I feel the time invested in it was wasted, exactly — of course it was fun to spend time with John, Paul, George, Ringo, Billy, and the rest — but I do wonder if Peter Jackson was really the right person for this job, which was essentially an editing project. Given that Jackson is the man who made nine hours of movies out of one short book about one short person, one might conclude that editing is not exactly his strong point.

I feel churlish complaining, especially since if there had been an opportunity to get one’s hands on the dozens of hours of raw footage, I probably would have signed up, heedless of the risk to my sanity. But it does seem like Get Back could have been half as long and hit all the high points quite well. There were moments, especially in the middle of the second installment, when I reflected that life is short and that this thing was absorbing entirely too much of it.

One also might quibble with the decision to relegate the post-rooftop studio recording session, probably the most musically coherent part of the footage, to scattered clips played over the closing credits. But at that point I was ready for it all to be over so I could, um, get back to watching the basketball game.

I know, it’s fucked up, right? I’m a little mad at myself. Probably someday I will revisit the series in a more expansive frame of mind and recant everything I just said. I know this is at least in part a reaction to the endless hype leading up to it, and breathless reviews that accompanied its release. But at this moment here, I feel quite content to cancel Disney + and get on with my life.