George Harrison: Living in the Material World

Harrison’s complicated search for a fixed point within himself generally fits in nicely with Scorsese’s fictional films with male protagonists who question whether they have chosen the right path, while also partly reflecting the life path of the director himself. Harrison and Scorsese were both raised according to strict Catholic principles and grew up outside the circle of their peers. Both of them also found a refuge in the world of music and film. Art thus became for them much more than a mere everyday diversion. They elevated it to a position among the main reasons for their existence. Despite the similarity of their stories, Scorsese attempts to maintain greater critical distance than in his cinephilic documentaries about films and filmmakers (My Voyage to Italy, A Letter to Elia). This documentary is not dominated by an adoring tone and it is far from being a reverential memorial. Scorsese is more interested in Harrison’s personality and in his work, which would have been easier to uncritically admire – this, along with the quantity of collected archival material, explains why the music is present mostly in the background rather in the form of concert clips. However, Scorsese didn’t stop with gathering together lesser-known photographs and videos. He composes from them a mosaic of Harrison’s life with the carefulness of a palaeontologist building a dinosaur skeleton from small fragments of bones. Every shard of the past is thoughtfully incorporated into the context of the “narrative”. For example, a video of the Beatles actively taking photographs is followed by the photographs that they took at the time. It looks logical and obvious, but there are undoubtedly hours of hard work behind it. The most devoted Beatles fans will doubtlessly find certain parts of the documentary to be too short and others will find them inappropriately long. For me, as a listener who respects but does not worship the Beatles, George Harrison changed over the course of three and a half hours from a quiet, rather inconspicuous musician with a sorrowful look into an immensely talented man worthy of admiration and fascinating in his nature. 80% (16.10.2012)

Every documentary featuring the Beatles or at least one of their members interests me, even more so when it's directed by such a film master as Martin Scorsese. George Harrison was one of the quieter members, but he was no less creative and a great innovator. The finale is a bit too contrived for tears, but it does leave an impact. (28.03.2017)