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Attempting to portray George Harrison’s entire life in a documentary pieced together with Beatles footage and aged interviewees, Martin Scorcese does well to cut it down to only three hours. These three hours, however, skim the surface of every phase addressed; Harrison’s spirituality, which is constructed as the crux of the documentary, is bogged down by Beatle-mania and irrelevant interviews. Living in the Material World is more akin to an extended obituary, elevating Harrison to the role of misunderstood hero, rather than an individual.
This glorification is at the cost of the other Beatles, who are depicted as mere supporters along Harrison’s path towards musical and spiritual enlightenment. Lennon’s usual post as the peaceful revolutionary is marginalised by the representation of Harrison and the emphasis on his distinction from the other Beatles. Scorcese sends out a confusing message here; the beginning of the documentary is laden with Beatles footage and accounts of their family-like unity, whilst the remainder attempts to set Harrison apart.
Yoko Ono, for instance, repeatedly distinguishes Harrison as the Beatle with the greatest talent. She speaks of their choice of singles, and how McCartney provided the majority of these, with Lennon accounting for the B-sides. Her enthusiasm for Harrison’s ‘Something’ becoming a single to some extent even places him above Lennon in terms of song-writing skills. Although this could be seen as a refreshing new perspective on her relationship to the Beatles, the generic Beatles’ fan notion that she split the band up renders this difficult to digest and is unconvincing in context. Clapton’s interview is similarly marred by a prior knowledge of his affair with Harrisons’ wife, Patti Boyd, which undermines almost the entirety of his interview and its sincerity. Yet to the uninformed viewer, his relationship with Harrison appears irrelevant, his interview frequency unsubstantiated.
Tenuous transitions abound, and the attempt at an ocean motif representing ‘change’ only irks in its generic symbolism. The documentary does offer some rarely seen footage of Harrison, such as a particularly moving clip of him moving his arms as if in dance whilst riding a motorbike, ‘Something’ playing hauntingly in the background. These three minutes capture him more definitively than the previous two hours. Interviews with Olivia Harrison similarly ground him in a way the previous interviewees fail to, and it is a shame that the majority of the documentary remains so undeveloped.
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