in retrospect I'm kind of fascinated by the way michael lindsay-hogg misunderstood the beatles while making this mess. like yes, he's the most punchable person on screen at any given time; whenever he opens his mouth he says something that feels custom-designed to slam into their most specific and deeply-held insecurities, and his ego ensures that he doesn't listen to them at all. but the nature of his failure is so perfectly representative of what's always wrong with public perceptions of the beatles, and it's so interesting when you remember that he is also the director of some classic uhh... mclennon fanfiction, I guess? that's not exactly right, but I don't know how else to characterize the movie "two of us," which was made in 2000 and is frankly the only beatles biopic I've ever really liked. the fact that this smarmy kid who missed the point so hard while making "let it be" managed to nail it while directing this fix-it fic later is enthralling, honestly.
because the problem that he keeps running into is a question of scale and what it is that makes the beatles good. he's very invested in this concept of having them out in an ancient amphitheater in the desert and doing these sweeping overhead shots with a giant audience. he's so married to this idea that he ignores the band repeatedly telling him that they aren't willing to do that, because they won't travel and aren't all that comfortable with a big audience in the first place. it's not even that he keeps pushing for this because they're saying no without offering an alternative; the boys suggest perfectly good concepts, but a lot of things the they ask for are small. they want to do a show in a club, or a dance hall, or the studio. they keep telling him they want close and intimate, and he keeps saying no, we need Huge and Sweeping and Universal!
related to this, probably the moment that most makes me want to yell "fuck you" at the screen is when linda offers an opinion and says, "I'm speaking as a fan!" and MLH snottily replies that he is also a fan, and a bigger fan than she is. it's mostly an annoying comment because of how breathtakingly patronizing and self-important it is. but the underlying insinuation is that he Gets It in a way she does not - his feelings are the justified worship of the larger-than-life music gods, while hers are supposedly just piddly little personal affection for quirky, imperfect human beings who happen to be making something notable.
the adolescent hubris and misogyny of these two issues aside, you can see that his problem is that he thinks they're good because they're big, rather than big because they're good. he's bought into the marketing contrivance of the past few years that the beatles represent some kind of platonic ideal of universal love that's the same for everyone and everything, and that any portrayal of them should therefore be massive and all-encompassing. but he's mistaking the packaging for what's inside it, which is four oddballs who have spent the last decade fueled in large part by their deeply personal attachment to one another and wonky charisma that makes audiences want to connect with them. they're not prophets or wizards; they're a close-knit club band who have a taste for novelty and have been set loose on the fancy recording equipment. MLH is blinded by the glamour that's been painted over them, though, so he doesn't see that the strange, sometimes ugly little love that keeps them chugging along is more important to who they are than the perfect and global significance he imagines them having.
which is what makes me marvel at "two of us," because it operates on the absolute reverse of that mistake. so much of what makes it work is that it happens on a teeny tiny scale. most of the movie has fictional john and fictional paul as the only characters on screen, and nearly all the action is them talking to each other. if there are other speaking characters present, there's a sense of discomfort or comedic awkwardness - john and paul are initially tense in each other's presence, but at the same time are the only people either of them are comfortable with. they seem protected in their solitude, which is a hell of a contrast to how exposed and cornered the real beatles seem in the twickenham footage from let it be/get back. the whole story is a bittersweet bit of wish fulfillment about two people mending a complicated friendship, because the magic was never that they were larger than life, it was that they were human-sized all along, and that was more special than idealized caricatures of rock stars could have ever been. it took him 30 years, but this guy did eventually figure out what he did wrong and try again. I don't know, I think it's neat.
(I do think linda should have gotten a free swing at him, though.)
titsay
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
theartofmadeline
romaincrisis
