Can there be too much of a good thing? Peter Jackson's 'The Beatles: Get Back' tests that

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Peter Jackson’s “The Beatles: Get Back” may be the most thorough — exhausting, even — corrective in movies.

It’s also a fascinating exploration of the creative process, featuring the most creative minds in popular music working out songs under deadline pressure. But at three parts and nearly 7 and a half hours, that’s an awful lot of exploration. Jackson goes big with everything.

Of course, for Beatles completists, it could never be enough. I bow to no one in my love for the band, but endless trial runs of “Get Back” or “I’ve Got a Feeling” at some point become less enlightening and more tedious. The finished product of what they’re working on, on the other hand, is great. In particular, a rave-up take on “I’ve Got a Feeling” during the famous rooftop concert at the film’s climax is amazing.

But it’s one of two takes of the song they play on the rooftop. There are three versions of “Get Back.” In “Let It Be” we got a truncated version of the mini-concert, the band’s last public performance. The new film gives us the whole thing, but it’s a little repetitive.

Like the rest of the movie. Roger Ebert used to say that no good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough. “The Beatles: Get Back” is an interesting test of that premise.

Jackson uses technology to make the 52-year-old footage look new

From left to right, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon in an image from Peter Jackson's documentary "The Beatles: Get Back."
From left to right, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon in an image from Peter Jackson's documentary "The Beatles: Get Back."

The film looks stunning. Although the footage is 52 years old, you’d never know it. Jackson, with the technology he used to such good effect in “They Shall Not Grow Old,” a documentary about World War I, makes the footage vibrant, remarkably so.

And the music never gets old.

In 1969 the Beatles hired Michael Lindsay-Hogg to direct a film about the making of their new album. There were plans for a TV special, which fell through. The album was to be a back-to-basics affair after the disengagement of “The Beatles,” more commonly called the White Album.

What it became, in the resulting 1970 film “Let It Be,” was a dispiriting, depressing portrait of dysfunction and disintegration. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were almost ghoulish hanging around the studio together. George Harrison was put upon and surly. Ringo Starr was … Ringo. And Paul McCartney was the villain.

That was the narrative then, and it’s what Jackson, working with 60 hours of film and 150 hours of audio, has set out to change.

It’s a clunky attempt at times. In “The Beatles: Get Back,” we see many instances of Lennon and McCartney laughing together in the studio, horsing around, seemingly having a grand old time of it. But then we’ll see a brief scene in which someone says to Lennon that he and McCartney aren’t really writing together anymore, that they aren’t getting on all that well, maybe something can bring them closer. And he’ll agree.

In Jackson’s happy-happy, joy-joy version, it’s difficult to see what they’re talking about.

"The Beatles: Get Back" takes a deep dive into the lives and recording sessions of The Beatles in the lead-up to their rooftop set on Savile Row in January 1969.
"The Beatles: Get Back" takes a deep dive into the lives and recording sessions of The Beatles in the lead-up to their rooftop set on Savile Row in January 1969.

Though not impossible. The band members don’t really shed the versions of themselves we see in “Let It Be.” This time things are just more subtle.

In “The Beatles: Get Back” McCartney comes off less as a tyrant and more as someone who feels as if he has to take on the mantle of leader. Lennon, much sunnier this time around, occasionally complains that they’re spending too much time working out McCartney’s songs at the expense of his, but there are no big fights.

Ringo is still Ringo, and presumably will be forevermore. But Harrison is the most put-upon and off-put by McCartney. (Harrison, supposedly the quiet one, is surprisingly open in his criticism of Lennon and McCartney’s lyrics and melodies at times.)

Harrison quit during the making of 'Let It Be.' This time we see it happen

Famously, Harrison quit during the sessions and left for several days. This time we see it happen. He simply gets up, says, “I’m leaving the band now” and walks out. The reaction?

“If he doesn’t come back by Tuesday we’ll get (Eric) Clapton,” Lennon says.

Ouch.

Eventually, after a couple of visits to his home by the band, Harrison does come back. McCartney dials back the obsessive controlling impulse to some extent and they continue on. But what really changes the mood is the arrival of Billy Preston for a visit. They tell him they’re working on some songs that could use a keyboard player. Would he like to sit in?

He would, and he does, and it immediately lifts everyone’s mood. His contributions to “Get Back” and “Let It Be,” among others, are immeasurable.

Ono’s presence in the studio is often a point of contention for Beatles fans. In this film McCartney defends her being there — she and Lennon are in love, he says, and they want to be together. What of it? “It’s going to be such an incredible comical thing in 50 years time,” McCartney says. “They broke up because Yoko sat on an amp.”

Indeed, Ono seems sunnier than in “Let It Be,” occasionally bopping around to songs.

Segments like that are interesting, revealing, maybe revelatory. But they’re placed in the middle of so much else. Like Harrison’s song says, “It’s All Too Much.”

And yet. When McCartney sits down and pounds out the chords that open “Let It Be,” it’s magic.

'The Beatles: Get Back'

Part 1 streams on Disney+ on Nov. 25. Parts 2 and 3 follow the next two days.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Peter Jackson's 'The Beatles: Get Back' is stunning. And it's too long