>Жду не дождусь выхода :) Кто знает, интервью >были записаны специально для фильма? Я фильм не видела, но исходя из информации о нем, можно сказать, что так и есть, во всяком случае большинство из них.
Re: "Living in the Material World" - документальный фильм Мартина Скорсезе о Джордже Харрисоне Автор:Sweet Little Queen XIIIДата: 20.09.11 14:29:03
(продолжение) Another potential issue is that there’s a generous helping of Ravi Shankar, but that’s what Beatles fans said back in the 1970s so why should it be any different here.
Harrison’s constant, restless quest for self-enlightenment drove him and provides the impetuous for this documentary, which sits alongside - but is much more captivating than - Scorsese’s Bob Dylan biopic, No Direction Home, as opposed to Shine A Light or The Last Waltz. (“People say I’m the Beatle who changed the most,” he says in an archive interview. “But to me that’s what life is all about.”)
Scorsese opts not to appear on camera here, and does not question the interviewees, who also include Harrison’s first wife Patti Boyd, (who memorably left him for Clapton), his son Dhani, Ray Cooper of HandMade Films and Eric Idle.
Harrison himself is a large and warm presence through a jaw-dropping array of archive footage and gorgeous still photography. (He’s shown to be sharp-witted and sardonic, greeting McCartney in later years with “is that a vegetarian leather jacket?”)
Scorsese breaks the film into easily-digestible chunks, with emotional strands weaving the whole piece together; there’s a quick run through Harrison’s childhood; the Beatles years; his songwriting; quest for enlightenment and spirituality through India and beyond; solo success; the Bangladeshi aid concert; the Travelling Wilburys; HandMade; and at home in Henley, where he fought cancer and was brutally stabbed by an intruder.
Despite Harrison’s many, many notable achievements (mortgaging his house to make The Life Of Brian being only one of them), it’s The Beatles which underline the film, of course. And there’s a strong suspicion that with two members of the band dead, this may prove to be the most insightful documentary ever made about the group dynamic, even though it never tackles the world’s biggest rock ‘n’ roll phenomenon head-on.
George Harrison: Living In The Material World 19 September, 2011 | By Fionnuala Halligan Dir: Martin Scorsese. US. 2011. 208mins A compelling portrait of a man who may always remain essentially elusive, Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison: Living In The Material World is a tenderhearted and revelatory look at “the quiet Beatle”. Neither a hagiography nor a full warts-and-all expose, it gently and insistently probes the essence of Harrison and despite its lengthy running time is an engrossing and ultimately joyous insight into his life and times. Harrison himself is a large and warm presence through a jaw-dropping array of archive footage and gorgeous still photography. Viewing the Beatles through the less divisive figure of Harrison, Scorsese casts an unexpectedly sharp light on the band and its dynamic. While the director makes no concessions to those who aren’t familiar with the group, particularly in the documentary’s early stages, this should be of interest to a much wider audience than the Beatles’ ageing fanbase.
Its natural home may be TV (it will air on HBO in US in October) but hopefully select theatrical engagements will prevail, with an interval at the 91-minute mark.
Produced by Scorsese with Harrison’s widow, Olivia, this documentary doesn’t quite skirt over the musician’s darker side, yet neither does it pick at the underbelly. Harrison was evidently a greatly loved man, yet contributors including Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Yoko Ono and Ringo Starr, amongst others, consistently refer to his two sides (Starr memorably referring to a “bag of beads and a bag of anger”).
A drug problem is alluded to briefly, and the fact he was outspoken and a womaniser are also underlined. This can be frustrating - at Scorsese’s behest the viewer is trying to know this man, and it feels as if the curtains are closing. But, overall, this gentle approach somehow chimes with the man everyone on screen is describing.
Re: "Living in the Material World" - документальный фильм Мартина Скорсезе о Джордже Харрисоне Автор:Sweet Little Queen XIIIДата: 20.09.11 14:26:04
San Sebastián film festival: from ghosts to George HarrisonThe Spanish film festival brings interesting new fare from Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's chiller Intruders to Martin Scorsese's Harrison tribute Living in the Material World
There was no doubt who stole the show in the festival's opening few days, though, and that was Martin Scorsese with Living in the Material World, a fantastically indulgent triple solo-album of a movie, which was his colossal 208-minute documentary-slash-fan-tribute to George Harrison, featuring interviews with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Martin and many more. It was baggy and could arguably have come down to three hours, or two hours – it didn't need to be three-and-a-half hours long. But reason not the need. It was a hugely involving event, which made a serious, reasoned case for George Harrison as an authentically spiritual figure in pop music, a musician who, alone in the Beatles, and perhaps alone in 60s pop culture, genuinely cared about the life of the spirit and the nature of the transcendental. And with his 1971 concert for Bangladesh, George Harrison invented the benefit gig.
Scorsese argued that within the Beatles' tense group dynamic Harrison was inspired and energised by the Lennon/McCartney nexus but also alienated from it, and frustrated by it. As the Beatles' lead guitarist and a gifted composer, he should have been at least equal in status to John and Paul but never was, and his delicate musical sensibility did not have their worldly, sensual pop-instinct and punch. Scorsese brings the film to a climactic rendition of While My Guitar Gently Weeps half way through the film, and that song never sounded so compelling or thrilling, the voice of the musician himself: lonely, melancholy but defiant. Yet of course, when the quarrelling Beatles broke up George discovered what John and Paul discovered – that this longed-for liberation from the others' interference did not make their solo efforts soar, but flounder. The mysterious chemistry was gone. Undoubtedly, George Harrison's solo work had something of the prog vanity and conceit that punk was reacting against, but Harrison showed he had the spirit of punk in his soul by gloriously bankrolling the Monty Python film Life Of Brian with his company Handmade Films. (The film reminds us that George Martin's Parlophone record label was originally a comedy label, which produced Peter Sellers's classic LPs: Sellers is shown pictured with Harrison in one shot.)
Before Scorsese's documentary, I didn't realise that this was no rich man's indulgence. Harrison had to mortgage his house to write a $4m cheque for Life Of Brian. Intriguingly, the film allows us to compare two classic pieces of archive TV talk-show footage: Malcolm Muggeridge pompously denouncing the Pythons for hastening the demise of Christian civilisation, and John Mortimer sceptically attacking George Harrison's concept of "karma". There is an ironic karmic link, which the film does not explicitly point out, between Lennon's death and Harrison's – George had cancer, but his life was shortened by a horrendous, violent attack from a mentally disturbed intruder at his house. Undoubtedly, Scorsese has a weakness for alpha-male rock stars and maybe the film could have done with a sharper, more unimpressed look at, say, Harrison's super-group The Travelling Wilburys. But it was still very enjoyable.