Premiering on Tuesday, October 4th at the New York Film Festival and on Wednesday, October 5th at 9PM EST on HBO, is the Martin Scorsese documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World. (Olivia Harrison has released a companion book of the same name.) Separated into two parts, the film focuses on his professional and personal life using interviews and archival footage.
The band’s rise to fame is portrayed from an inside perspective with several photos taken from hotel windows looking out to the crowd. The footage shows the four leaning on each other for normalcy in chaotic times. It’s amazing how each one of them maintains a wonderful sense of humor and manages somehow not to become bitter. There is also a focus on the breakup and how it was not any one event, but rather a time when the four of them were discovering their own voice outside of the band. In many ways, the film is a coming-of-age story.
The best parts of the film are of George’s life post-Beatles. His relationship with Ravi Shankar and the impact that Eastern music had on his own spirituality was particularly fascinating. He also had a variety of interests including race cars, producing and songwriting for films not to mention his songwriting career.
Last year, the documentary Lennon NYC was screened at the New York Film Festival and what I enjoyed most about it was how it was just focused on John Lennon’s time in New York City. What I think was missing from the George Harrison documentary, was that same focus.
Contributors: Astrid Kirchherr, Dhani Harrison, Eric Clapton, Eric Idle, George Martin, Harry Harrison, Jackie Stewart, Jane Birkin, Jim Keltner, Joan Taylor, Ken Scott, Klaus Voormann, Mukunda Goswami, Neil Aspinall, Olivia Harrison, Pattie Boyd, Paul McCartney, Peter Harrison, Phil Spector, Ray Cooper, Ringo Starr, Terry Gilliam, Tom Petty, Yoko Ono
Rating: Worth a viewing for any fan, but would be just as good at home on HBO. 7/10
Sunday I attended the screening and after the film, where we were joined via Skype with Executive Producer Margaret Bodde, Director Martin Scorsese, Producer/Wife Olivia Harrison, Nigel Sinclair, and Editor David Tedeschi.
The audio clip is split into chapters, but also outlined below:
- Origins of the film – 00:31
- Finding the form of the film – 05:47
- The music of the film – 10:48
- Question: Anything specific that was left out that you wished could have made it in? – 13:39
- Question: Was there any footage that was not properly preserved? / researching the footage – 16:45
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