Review: George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011)
Cast: George Harrison, Paul McCartney, John Lennon
Director: Martin Scorsese
Country: USA
Genre: Documentary | Biography
Official Trailer: Here
I can’t claim to be an impartial reviewer when it comes to the work of George Harrison. He’s first among equals as my personal favorite of the Fab Four. His tasteful mix of rockabilly, pop, and country inspired me to take up the guitar as a hobby. A framed photo from the Beatles’ early Hamburg days adorns my bedroom wall; in it, a merely teenage George, his face confidently at the microphone, stands up front while John and Paul flank him in the background, out of focus and literally overshadowed in whatever dimly lit venue they found themselves in. That seems to me a perfect image when discussing Martin Scorsese’s sprawling, defiantly hagiographic new two-part HBO portrait, Living in the Material World.
For much of its three-and-a-half-hour running time, the documentary presents a linear account of George’s life in the Beatles and then solo career through copious amounts of archive footage and contemporary talking heads interviews with friends and colleagues. Although the youngest and most seemingly private of the Beatles, it’s clear that he was also the most mature and high-minded, noted as a creative bridge between the band’s acknowledged leaders, Paul the romantic pop star and John the iconoclastic rocker.
Even in the film’s first part, a sweeping look at the rise and success of the Beatles that sometimes peculiarly veers off into examining cultural minutiae like the swinging 60s or the relationship between photographer Astrid Kirchherr and original bassist Stu Sutcliffe, hints of George’s spiritual dimension come to the fore. In one clip of a televised discussion regarding John’s controversial “bigger than Jesus” remark, for instance, George defends the concepts of God and the divine. The film also convincingly plays up the spiritual questing hidden within such Beatles-era Harrison compositions as “Here Comes the Sun,” “Something,” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” sometimes at the expense of the songs’ usually-understood meanings.
The second part of Living in the Material World begins with the Beatles’ break-up and takes up this near-mystical aspect of George’s personality as its main subject, even while showing him engaged in charity work, film production, and other important secular pursuits. Seemingly in response to the conventional wisdom that 1960s stars took to drug use and Eastern spirituality as fashionable fads or affectations, the film takes George’s short-term LSD use and lifelong foray into meditation as seriously as he did. The man himself makes clear in candid interview footage that he ingested hallucinogens only as long as they provided creative inspiration and pleasurable consciousness expansion. George looks the most comfortable and joyful in his middle age when taking sitar lessons from Ravi Shankar, tending to his garden, or performing at the groundbreaking Concert for Bangladesh, outlets for and expressions of a spiritual awakening that, more than anything else in this epic documentary, makes a case for elevating the guitarist as a subject worthy of such a monumental undertaking as this.
Director Scorsese is no newcomer to spiritual stirrings or the musical documentary form. In both fiction and non-fiction films, he attempts to reconcile the body and the spirit, violence and redemption, a kinship with George’s navigating of materialism and spirituality that makes him an ideal if obvious chronicler of the so-called Quiet Beatle. Although the absence of Scorsese’s voice may make the film seem overly impersonal compared to his previous efforts, some editorial choices (undertaken with David Tedeschi, Scorsese’s documentary editor since the TV series “The Blues” in 2003) make his presence felt. Part one is especially replete with loud-quiet-loud dynamics, where a particularly raucous live performance or recording (reminiscent of The Last Waltz’s opening exhortation, “This Film Should Be Played Loud!”) will suddenly drop out, usually replaced by a relatively quiet interview or home movie moment. And what else could be expected from the filmmaker behind My Voyage to Italy but evoking mid-60s London with Antonioni’s Blow-up? Yet I still wished for a bit more context, especially for George’s childhood and how his nascent spirituality may have affected his earlier marriage with Pattie Boyd, who famously had an affair with their mutual friend Eric Clapton and almost wholly appears through photographs and archive footage. Scorsese also elides the lawsuit over the authorship of “My Sweet Lord” and gossipy stories that can be found in unauthorized biographies, but understanding and celebration, not authoritativeness, are clearly his aims.
Fans will know the narrative trajectory of Living in the Material World but will groove on the live footage and inside stories, while non-Beatlemaniacs will get a glimpse of a thoroughly complex pop star yearning for more. Martin Scorsese has crafted about as engaging and broad an account of George’s life that I could ask for, a fitting tribute to an icon who struggled to live life to the fullest while understanding that, to quote one of his own songs, “All things must pass.”
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