George Harrison: Living in the Material World Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

George Harrison: Living in the Material World Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 2, 2012

Paul was the cute one. John was the intellectual. Ringo was the goofball. So what did that make George? The quiet one? The mystical one? The introspective one? Certainly all three of those, but even longtime fans of The Beatles may be surprised when more than one interview participant in this piece mentions that George could also be the “angry one”. It surely seems anachronistic to think of George—the Beatle who after all seemed most moved by and attuned to Transcendental Meditation—as being anything other than a serene, Zen like presence, and yet the portrait that emerges from Martin Scorcese’s 2011 documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World is one of a surprisingly dual natured individual, one who yearned for the Divine but who was still down to earth enough to seek a tax shelter for his immense riches after he found out he was dying of cancer. The problem with attempting to craft a documentary around an icon like Harrison is that the subject is so well-known, yet so remote, that there’s a weird dialectic of sorts going on where a lot of people are going to feel they know the subject, while at the same time the essence of that selfsame subject remains maddeningly out of reach. Kudos, then, to Scorsese, who has fashioned a brilliant montage of Harrison’s life and work, one which mostly artfully manages to balance the larger than life elements with the everyday and mundane. Where this documentary may go at least slightly awry is in its sometimes strange predilection of assuming that supposedly established facts are going to be equally well known among a vast and diverse audience, many of whom were probably born well after the halcyon days of Beatlemania.

Martin Scorsese is such an icon in his own right and has built such a formidable oeuvre as a director of dramatic films that it’s sometimes hard to remember that Scorsese actually has had a long and equally worthwhile career working in music-related documentaries. Two of his earliest credits were as part of the editing teams on the legendary Woodstock and the not quite legendary but very enjoyable Medicine Ball Caravan, and once his reputation became firmly established as a director, he made one of the best remembered music documentaries of all time, The Last Waltz, about The Band. More recently he contributed to PBS’ long running American Masters series with his fascinating portrait No Direction Home: Bob Dylan. But delving a little deeper into Scorsese’s varied output uncovers some lesser known contributions in various guises of director or producer, including Shine a Light, a strangely underappreciated piece on the Rolling Stones, as well as a 1995 In the Spotlight television special on Eric Clapton, the blues documentary The Soul of a Man, another blues television documentary appropriately titled The Blues, The Concert for New York, and lest it be forgotten, the music video for Michael Jackson’s “Bad”. This is obviously a man with a deep affection for a wide variety of musical genres, and Scorsese’s love of music almost always results in top notch documentaries that are built around musical subjects. That’s certainly the case with George Harrison: Living in the Material World.

The documentary is more or less chronologically arranged, after a bit of a lurching prelude which seems for a moment to be skipping over the contentious breakup of The Beatles. But once a glut of introductory comments and information are out of the way, Scorsese settles down (more or less) into a masterfully constructed assemblage of archival footage, including copious (and at times extremely rare) shots of Harrison, along with contemporary interviews from a wealth of people like Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, Terry Gilliam, and Eric Clapton. It’s probably wise that Scorsese tends not to identify most of the people who pop up on screen, as so many of them are so iconic, but one of the documentary’s few missteps is in assuming that everyone is going to know who figures like Stuart Sutcliffe or even Brian Epstein were. Large sequences are also given over to early Beatles acolytes Klaus Voorman and Astrid Kirchherr without ever fully explaining who these two are and why they’re so important. That’s at least somewhat offset by the participation of Olivia Harrison (who spearheaded the idea for the documentary) and Dhani Harrison, who also gives voice to his father via a number of letters home George wrote through the years which Dhani reads as narration.

What becomes quite apparent as the documentary follows the long and winding road (sorry) of Harrison’s life and career is that George was perhaps above all a questing soul, one who sought Ultimate Truth via any number of mechanisms, whether that be LSD or the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Of course Harrison’s music was simply another vehicle for him to both channel the Divine as well as to craft a portal to the Divine, and that exploratory spirit comes through brilliantly throughout this piece. Scorsese and editor David Tedeschi offer a seamless mélange of footage and interviews, often using the well chosen source cues as fairly unusual counterpoint to the imagery selected to go along with them. There’s something both comfortingly “known” and something mysteriously unknowable about Harrison, even as Living in the Material World spools out an impressive amount of information about the man. All things must pass, it seems, but this remarkable piece of documentary filmmaking should help keep the fascination with George Harrison alive and well for some time to come.

George Harrison: Living in the Material World Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

George Harrison: Living in the Material World is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Hip-O Select with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1 and 1.33:1. As might be expected from a documentary knit together from so many different sources, image quality here is highly variable, going from the immaculately sharp and well detailed contemporary interview segments to the almost unrecognizable fuzziness of several old 8mm home movies. The overall look of the documentary is certainly well above average, and it also faithfully reproduces the look of all of these different sources and film stocks. Colors are generally quite robust and well saturated, and at least in the contemporary sequences, fine detail is extremely pleasing. Contrast and black levels are as variable as the source elements, again as should be expected.

George Harrison: Living in the Material World Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

George Harrison: Living in the Material World features two lossless audio options, a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix and an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 stereo fold down. There's both good news and bad news to report, though the bad news is simply that there isn't enough good news—by which I mean, many of the fantastic source cues interwoven into the documentary are simply cut short, as seems to be Scorsese and Tedeschi's wont in documentaries like these. The 5.1 mix really beautifully opens up a lot of Harrison's and The Beatles' music, and it's especially welcome in the massed drones of some of the Indian pieces, which breathe with a new life on this mix. The rest of the documentary is a pretty straightforward affair featuring talking heads, and those elements sport excellent fidelity. Dynamic range is quite varied, especially with regard to several of the music cues, but some fans are probably going to be wishing that more of those music cues were available without the "sudden stop" editing utilized here.

George Harrison: Living in the Material World Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Paul McCartney (HD; 2:25) has Paul reminiscing about his best adventure with George, when they were kids.


• Here Comes the Sun (HD; 2:41) has Dhani and George Martin fiddling around with mixing levels as they listen to George's legendary song. Martin's son is on hand talking about his father's orchestration. A never heard guitar solo by George is also featured.


• Damon Hill (HD; 4:28) talks about asking George to help him start a racing career.


• Jeff Lynne (HD; 2:58) has Lynne reminiscing about working with Harrison.


• Dispute and Violence (HD; 5:15) is archival footage of Harrison and band (including the huge Shankar ensemble) playing.

George Harrison: Living in the Material World Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I had the extreme pleasure of seeing George Harrison in concert with Ravi Shankar when I was a kid, and it was an amazing experience, one that really opened me up to ethnic musics (which not so coincidentally can include genres like the blues and even rock 'n' roll). This documentary brings Harrison to life in all his enigmatic but charming glory, something I still remember from that concert all these years later. Scorsese has put together a remarkably informative piece that is always compelling and never dry, despite a rather long running time. The only downside here is the assumption that everyone is going to know who all of these people are, and that's probably not the case. Otherwise, with great video and sterling audio, this release easily comes Highly recommended.