Here’s four minutes of completely unfiltered clips of The Beatles hard at work putting together the album and the first-time-in-three-years live concert that would mark the end of their time together as a band. All together (now), it’s our latest raw and chaotic look at The Beatles: Get Back.
Director Peter Jackson pored over more than 50 hours of “lost” behind the scenes footage from the long-buried yet widely bootlegged Let It Be documentary to piece together a doc of his own. It was originally built as a movie set for a 2020 theatrical release, but there’s so much material (and so much pandemic, probably) that it got delayed and expanded into a documentary series that will premiere in a three-night event on Disney+, starting Nov. 25.
What’s wild about this footage is how joyous the whole thing is. The Beatles’ fateful break-up has always been dogged by tales of an acrimonious split. The original Let It Be documentary’s rather dark and tortured portrayal of their final days together as a band is one of the reasons the film never showed up as a major home video release.
In that sense, this look at Get Back suggests Jackson’s work is meant to stand as a corrective. While the three-part Disney+ series will surely bring their fraying relationship into sharp focus, it’s clear even in this brief look that there was still an immense amount of love and creative interplay between the four superstars.
The Beatles: Get Back premieres Nov. 25 on Disney+.
