Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 14, 2021

For younger listeners in particular, the Bee Gees' music may more or less begin and end with their contributions to Saturday Night Fever, but as this appealing HBO documentary details, that was just one of several high points the Gibb Brothers experienced in their careers, and in fact there were whole "chapters" both before and after that still beloved film that helped to shape the brothers' lives and work. The fact that Saturday Night Fever came out in 1977 and the brothers had been performing at least semi-professionally since the mid-fifties may be at least one indication of how much happened to the Gibbs before the film admittedly changed their lives. There's an undeniably melancholic aspect to The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart which alludes at least subtextually to the passing of time and the changes that has wrought, leaving Barry the only surviving sibling. Archival interviews with Robin, Maurice and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Andy help to fill in the gaps and in fact often give rather insightful alternate perspectives to their shared history.

After some introductory backstage and concert footage of The Bee Gees at the height of their fame, the documentary begins and ultimately ends with Barry Gibb at what looks like a Miami compound, where he's both nostalgic but also kind of metaphysically in a kind of quasi-Rashomon space, having come to the conclusion that objective reality is a myth and all there is is individual perspectives and memories. Luckily, those perspectives and memories are vibrantly alive for Gibb, and they are augmented not just by those aforementioned archival interviews with his late brothers, but also a glut of other great vintage material, including home movies of the brothers as boys. Their love of music began early when they discovered what is often referred to as "blood harmony", i.e., the ability of singing siblings to almost magically blend with each other on vocals, and which is overtly mentioned by some of the talking heads here as being one of the defining aspects of their sound.

All three brothers are on record (no pun intended) in this piece as stating they had an unabashed desire to be famous from their earliest childhoods, and in fact with a guidance from a stage father rather than mother, they were performing semi-professionally from the time they were kids. Their parents actually seem like they were not overly insistent about anything, but it was their Dad's efforts that through a kind of wending path led to the boys being managed by Robert Stigwood. There are some kind of funny interviews with Eric Clapton in the documentary where he actually confesses to being upset that the Bee Gees were always Stigwood's favorites, and that he, Clapton, felt short changed as a result. Clapton also kind of humorously claims credit for suggesting the boys record in Miami during one of the (many) ebbs in their careers, which led to their image redifining classic album Main Course.

The documentary reveals that the boys had incredible luck, but also unbelievable amounts of fortitude, since they ended up experiencing both the peaks and valleys of a music industry career perhaps more than most, if only because they started so young. There's a lot of great footage of their first flush of stardom, when they were considered the "new Beatles" and experienced a number of major hits like I Started a Joke and Massachusetts. As Barry mentions, though (and ironically in terms of a much later valley the boys experienced), when you first get famous, you feel like it's going to last forever and people will always love you, and that turns out to not be the case more often than not. Interestingly and kind of sadly in this regard, there's some sidebar material here about the older brothers trying to get that message across to Andy Gibb when he was starting to show signs of over the top behaviors and substance abuse.

Some of the coolest stuff in the documentary is almost sidebar material, as in the really interesting demonstration revolving around the early (the documentary states first) use of a drum loop for Jive Talkin. The documentary actually shows a literal loop of tape that was strung through pulley wheels to create the memorable rhythm underpinning for one of the band's best remembered tunes.

There is a lot of entertaining talking head material scattered throughout the piece, including some interviews with other members of famous "bands of brothers" like folks with the last names of Jonas and Gallagher. What is really ultimately most moving about The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?, though, is Barry Gibb's slow but steady realization through the ups and downs of the brothers' careers (both together and separately) is that it was always the songwriting that was most important, and which Barry feels is proven by how many hits they wrote for others after their performing careers had started to cool (in part because of a rather odd "backlash" to the overwhelming success of Saturday Night Fever). What's kind of amazing in that regard, though, and which is detailed nicely in the documentary, is how the brothers formed an almost symbiotic unit in the recording studio, where they wrote songs on the fly as they were recording, something that may make their incredible output seem all the more amazing.

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO and Warner Brothers Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (often) in 1.78:1 (as can be seen in some of the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review, archival material can be in narrower aspect ratios). This is another career spanning documentary that includes a glut of archival video, and with three of the four Gibb brothers now sadly no longer with us, a lot of the interview material is older, and some looks obviously upscaled and probably sourced from interlaced elements, so that telltale bugaboos like aliasing and stair stepping are clearly visible. The contemporary interview footage looks nicely sharp and very well detailed, though there are just a couple of noticeable banding ripples in the Miami sky during some fade ins and fade outs of the outdoor material with Barry.

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart? features a great sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, though as tends to be the case with these types of documentaries, the musical elements are frequently used only as interstitials between talking head segments or even as underscoring for talking head segments. As such any real immersive opportunities are limited, but a lot of the music, especially the later disco material, sounds fantastic. All of the interview segments, both contemporary and archival, sound fine, with all spoken material delivered cleanly and clearly. Optional English subtitles are available.

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes

  Meeting the Bee Gees (HD; 2:04)

  
  

  Bands of Brothers (HD; 1:14)

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There is appropriately a lot of heart in this appealing documentary, and it's anchored by a rather wise and knowing presence in the form of Barry Gibb. The sadness of his brothers no longer being here is palpable, but Barry comes off as resilient if understandably nostalgic. When you consider how many classic songs the Bee Gees are responsible for, either as performers themselves, but also for a glut of other high profile acts, their contributions approach the realm of the mythic. What's so reassuring about The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?, then, is how down to earth and grounded in reality Barry seems. Technical merits are solid, and for fans of the boys if for no one else, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart? comes Recommended.