Paul McCartney's Get Back

At the end of the eighties Paul McCartney went out on a world tour after a long gap, and for the first time his set carried this many Beatles songs. The film is the record of that tour: the stage, the crowd, and short passages into the past in between. The subject is not the concert but how a musician goes back to his own history. He had avoided playing the Beatles repertoire for years, and here we watch that decision reverse along with the audience. The form is a straight concert film: multi-camera coverage, stage light and crowd shots. The archive inserts do not build a narrative, they only mark the distance in time. The real note is the director. Richard Lester shot it, meaning the man who made A Hard Day's Night and Help! is filming the same musician twenty-five years on. Hamish Stuart and Linda McCartney are in the band on stage. Who it is for: McCartney listeners and anyone who likes late-eighties stadium concert films. Who it is not for: viewers expecting backstage material; this is almost entirely on stage and tells you very little about the tour itself.