Man on the Run is filmmaker Morgan Neville’s new documentary about former Beatle Paul McCartney. Above, Linda and Paul McCartney in an undated picture.
Linda McCartney/Amazon Studios
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Linda McCartney/Amazon Studios
There have been loads of Beatles-related documentaries up to now decade or so, and sure, I’ve reviewed most of them. However in my protection, The Beatles are an excellent topic, musically and biographically — and one of the best filmmakers are drawn to them.
Peter Jackson gave us the Get Again documentary miniseries and the most recent installment of The Beatles Anthology. Ron Howard directed Eight Days a Week, concerning the group’s touring years. Martin Scorsese directed Residing within the Materials World, his two-part biography of George Harrison. All of them had been terrific — and all of them had been made by Oscar-winning administrators.
Documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville, who received an Oscar for his movie about backup singers, 20 Toes From Stardom, has joined that membership. He is already directed excellent biographies of everybody from Johnny Money and Anthony Bourdain to Steve Martin and Fred Rogers. And now, Prime Video is premiering his newest documentary, Man on the Run, about former Beatle Paul McCartney.
The phrase “former” is essential right here: Whereas transient, clever montages encapsulate the frenzy and affect of Beatlemania, Man on the Run is concentrated on the last decade instantly afterward — the Seventies. Particularly, it spans the interval from when McCartney left The Beatles to when his former bandmate, John Lennon, was shot and killed.
Neville carried out many prolonged new interviews with McCartney, however makes use of solely the sound. Just about all of the footage in Man on the Run is classic, so there are not any white-haired rock stars in sight. However as a result of McCartney is an government producer, and has offered a shocking quantity of beforehand unseen non-public footage, there’s plenty of contemporary stuff to see right here.
The hazard of McCartney having such enter, although, is of Man on the Run turning into too sanitized as a private biography. But it surely’s not. The last decade lined consists of McCartney saying the breakup of The Beatles, his very public musical feud with Lennon, the formation of McCartney’s post-Beatles band Wings, even the “Paul is lifeless” rumor.
And in these new interviews, McCartney appears to be talking truthfully — not solely about what occurred, however how he felt about all of it. On The Beatles breakup, for instance, it was McCartney who introduced it publicly — but it surely was Lennon who already had left the group. McCartney’s response, at age 27, was to retreat along with his household to a distant property he owned in Scotland — in a classic interview, Linda McCartney remembers her husband’s out-of-the-blue suggestion.
Man on the Run depends on different voices and views to defend a few of McCartney’s notorious actions throughout this era. Lennon’s son Sean, for instance, excuses McCartney’s surprised, understated response to John’s demise — when requested by reporters, he referred to as it “an actual drag” — as having been in shock.
And Lennon himself, in an interview filmed years after The Beatles’ breakup, admits that McCartney was proper in hating and suing the supervisor, Allen Klein, who John had introduced in to deal with the group. On the time, Lennon and McCartney even attacked each other in track — and in a brand new interview, McCartney could be very open about how a lot that stung.
That very same refreshing honesty extends to different key moments — the formation of his group Wings and recruiting Linda as its first constitution member, his jail time in Japan for bringing pot into that nation, even the time Lorne Michaels, on Saturday Evening Reside, jokingly supplied The Beatles a ridiculously small verify if they might reunite on his present.
Man on the Run is extra concerning the man than it’s about his inventive course of. However his music runs all via the documentary, and all of it provides as much as a formidable, inspirational second act.
