We see them horsing around and smoking like chimneys, singing the numbers they’re working on in mock accents worthy of Monty Python, chortling over gossip columns about themselves that they read out like reports from Mars, trading bits and pieces of their history with the driest of winks, not to mention their constant playing of old rock ‘n’ roll songs, including some of the ones they wrote when they were 15, as they try to work their way of the creative rut they seem to be stuck in.
“Get Back,” however, invites us to eavesdrop on the Beatles with a whole new micro level of voyeuristic engagement. In that film, we saw bits of their process, their camaraderie, their acrimony, their exultation. We’ve seen the Beatles with their hair down before, of course - in “ Let It Be,” the original 80-minute documentary that was put together, in 1970, out of these same sessions. “The Beatles: Get Back” is an eight-hour documentary, shown in three parts (starting Thanksgiving Day) on Disney Plus, that consists, to a large degree, of 1,000 moments you might have expected to be left on the cutting-room floor.
What’s on it is all the stuff that wasn’t lively or punchy or resonant or dramatic enough to make it into the finished film. In the world of movies, and the world of documentaries in particular, there’s a place known as the cutting-room floor. The song hasn’t been named yet, but “Get Back” suddenly exists in the universe. He’s pushing out the melody as if it were being born. Then, just like that, with the guitar beat driving from below, his voice inches up two notes, to the sixth and seventh. Over the guitar, he improvises in a high voice, but he’s only singing one note - the note that will become “Jojo was a man…” For a minute or two, he noodles around on that note he’s got a groove, a feeling, but not a song. John Lennon hasn’t come into the studio yet, and Paul McCartney, sitting around in one of his natty sweaters (this one is yellow), starts playing his bass guitar as if it were a regular guitar, strumming out a familiar propulsive rhythm. But on the morning of day four, a spark ignites. So far, the Beatles aren’t making much headway.
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