Martin Scorceses', take a man I knew just about everything about, opened him up in a wonderful film bio. Unfortunately, the man was Bob Dylan and the movie was "No Direction Home". The one, I am reviewing, the first Part of Scorceses' George Harrison bio "LIving In The Material World" is less successful.
Part One takes you from Harrison's birth all the way to his recording "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with Clapton for The Beatles' White Album. Of that recording, Clapton offers the least revealing anecdote known to man. Apparently, the day after an unsuccessful attempt at recording the album with an indifferent other three members of the band, Harrison invited Clapton to the studio. Whoop-di-do.
And here you have the problem with Scorseses' retelling of Harrison with the Beatles. Between.
1. Having lived through it.
2. Having read the bios.
3. Having read the tell all interviews.
4. The thousands upon thousands of books on the subject
5. The "Anthology" series.
After all that, there is nothing left to add and Scorsese adds nothing. He can't. Time conscriptions hurt Scorsese and so he truncates the story so much that if you didn't know it you wouldn't understand it. It is riddled with holes and self-evident at the same time. And it is waaaaaaay too well mannered. Wanna have a laugh, listen to McCartney trying to explain that Harrison was fucking around behind wife Patti Boyd's back. "George was a red blooded man, do you know what I mean?" Yeah, we know what he means.
Despite Scorceses attempts to con us into believing we are being giving glimpses into the very soul of the great guitarist and songwriter, nothing of the sort happens Scorcese has excerpts from Harrisons letters home, read aloud. and they tell us nothing we haven't figured out decades ago
Musically, it is ridiculous. There isn't one complete song, not one. What the hell? There are snippets here and there, one, Harrison singing along to film of the boys singing "This Boy" is a wonder, but there is no momentum. There is no musical story being told, it moves from "Don't Bother Me" thru " While My Guitar Gently Weeps" but it doesn't get any of it right -there is zero sense of a writer finding himself. Harison's awful "Within You And Without You" is hailed by George Martin while everybody knows the highlight of Harrisons love of Indian music occured an album earlier with "Love You Too". It is so strange and disappointing you.Scorces thinks gossip (Harrison being left out because of the L/M partnership) is a replacement for an understanding of his strengths (some of that guitar) and weaknesses (born to sing back up). If there is a story to Harrison's life it is first and foremost a musical story, but it isn't told here.
Part One is simultaneously too long and not nearly long enough. It is like watching The Passions Of Christ being told from the Virgin Mary's perspective -it is deep and deeply missed: Scorceses' movie skims and skims and skims, it fails to dig under and it is sexually squeamish. Rolling Stones recent cover story on Harrison was better.
Having said all that, I believe Part II, the Dark Horse years, will prove much, much better. For one thing, I don't have the background on his solo life (I know the music but not the actors) so it should be revealing and for another, the Beatles are so huge it is difficult to twell their story; the solo years is smaller in scale.
Many people whose opinions I respect loved this bio but I didn't. It isn't good enough. If you were visiting from Mars, this would not tell you why you should care about Harrisons legacy, and if you are on this Planet, you spend your time filling in the blanks of Scorseses' history for yourself.
Livingin the material? As Robert Christgau once wrote in his dismantling of the album of the same name: If you can call this living
Movie: B-
Music: C.
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