The Mirror and the Scene

Reassessing George? 

Living in the Material World (2011)

If Martin Scorsese met you for dinner and told you his next documentary would focus on the life of on one of the four Beatles, the first name that would spring to mind obviously would be Ringo.
 

According to a conversation Dhani Harrison relayed to GQ magazine recently, the idea for a documentary on George Harrison began when a friend of Olivia Harrison had dinner one evening with Martin Scorsese. He said that if he were to consider doing another documentary he wouldn't choose John, Paul, or even Ringo, but George.

The first part of the film, Living in the Material World (2011), directed by Martin Scorsese, serves as a miniature Beatles documentary focusing initially on the personalities of John and Paul, and slowly charting the emergence of quiet Beatle George. Memories of John are as expected, witty, quirky and funny, specifically where Lennon pours of a pint of lager over the head of a woman playing piano at a Harrison family wedding, thusly anointing her David. Another memory, from photographer and Beatles friend Astrid Kirchherr, recalls John visiting Stuart Sutcliffe’s art studio shortly after his death overcome with emotion. Here George emerges, stepping in behind a tearful John Lennon, supportive. Astrid captures this poignant moment on film.

Here begins the framing of George Harrison as the strong, quiet Beatle in the background, emotionally resilient, warm, brutally honest and matter of fact about all things life and death. This is a constant throughout Scorsese's film, from Harrison's surprising reaction to Roy Orbison’s death in a telephone call to Tom Petty, his light hearted and relatively candid statement to a clearly nervous and uneasy journalist on his battle with cancer and in the humour expressed amidst the turmoil and chaos of the attack on his life on the eve of the millennium.

George is presented as a simple yet remarkable man, who did not see life in the traditional western way. His search for truth was about achieving a sense of calm in life beyond the material world and in preparing the body for death. It is this idea he promoted most in his public appearances and through his friendship with the Maharashi and Indian musician Ravi Shankar.

After the Beatles, George slipped into a relatively private life refurbishing his home Friar Park not seeing himself as a ‘showbiz figure’. When asked toward the end of his life what worried him about dying, he could think of nothing to live for, other than that his son still ‘needed a father’.

Scorsese’s film follows a similar formula to the one used in his 2005 documentary on Bob Dylan, No Direction Home. That is, an assemblage of existing footage edited together coherently by Scorsese and his team, where talking heads provide the narrative interspersed between rare archival footage and a plethora of interviews with contemporaries and close associates. In the case of Living in the Material World, Scorsese was also given the benefit of access to home video footage of the Harrison family from George's wife Olivia. Where access to Dylan was given through the various interviews conducted by his manager, in the case of Harrison, we gain a more personal admittance into his life through the use of the blurry and dreamlike home video footage. This is most beautifully seen in both the opening and closing shots of the film, which show George emerging from a bed of red tulips. 

Unlike No Direction Home, where Dylan’s meteoric rise as a performing artist and songwriter is charted as an inescapable and historic odyssey very much in the foreground, Scorsese takes a more personal approach with Harrison, a very different type of artist. Unlike Dylan, Harrison is not an artist whose trajectory is charted in the foreground, but an artist who slowly emerges through the circumstances around him to a path of self-discovery and a wish to share this with others, before a relative retreat into a private life most clearly documented in the personal recollections of family and friends.

Where Harrison is seen as relatively unassuming and shy, the film does show specifically through the Concert for Bangladesh where he would emerge to perform for the benefit of others in need. In contrast to the perception of Harrison as a figure in the background, the film also achieves the feat of foregrounding his songs. The songs are often central to the film and where a song is used to express his philosophy, his hand written lyrics appear on screen to emphasise this. The effective use of his music is most clearly felt with the rush of strings leading into All Things Must Pass near the beginning of the film. Not only does Living in the Material World, suggest a need to reassess the importance of George Harrison within the Beatles and as a cultural figure, as see in his promotion of meditation, but also as a songwriter. Equally however, the film suggests that George Harrison was about becoming an exceptional person, of achieving something beyond the world we know.

Overall, Scorsese's film ironically (if the intention was to reassess his significance) does reassert common perceptions of George Harrison, as quiet and shy, as strong and spiritual, as a talented songwriter and musician, but most importantly it reminds those who may have forgotten. Harrison certainly had his moments as a writer, ‘All Things Must Pass’ is a deeply moving and beautiful song and alongside, If I Needed Someone, Something, While My Guitar Gently Weeps or Here Comes The Sun. All evidence someone with a true melodic knack and talent for writing great pop songs.

There is much to admire about George Harrison, however there are areas where the film does not dig as deep as one might expect. There are suggestions of an inner turmoil, of two Georges, the angry George and the calm and gentle George, but what all of this might be about is never fully revealed here.

The interviews with Ringo are as ever self-deprecating and funny and the segments with Paul show his great sense of humour and charm. Significantly missing from the film is Bob Dylan, a close friend of George’s since the mid 60s. As Dylan fans know, George was a Dylan fanatic and unfortunately much of George’s own home video footage of Dylan in which would he would sneakily film Dylan at the piano unaware have yet to surface from the Harrison archives.

Almost ten years after the death of George Harrison, the documentary serves to fill the void felt by many fans and serves to placate much the feeling of loss by bringing him once more to the forefront whilst accentuating (intended or not) his place within the Beatles.

The person who emerges most graciously from the documentary however, is Olivia Harrison. Her comments on their marriage are among the most wise and profound of all those interviewed, right down to her last comments about her final moments with George. It perhaps was not she who had been lucky to be married him but he who was lucky to have married her.

There is much to be written here about Scorsese’s film. Some have identified a trend in Scorsese’s recent work they title ‘schlockumentary’, highlighting a formula of assemblage of existing material. However, overall this is a valuable piece of work, about a well-loved man, who without doubt was an underrated and understated guitar player and at times a truly great songwriter. 

Woody Allen said that some people make art from their lives, while others make their lives art. George Harrison was comfortably in the latter group.