 The Omnibus division of indie and foreign-film god Film Movement properly marks the 60th anniversary of the formation of "The Beatles" with the August 20, 2019 DVD release of the 2018 documentary "The Beatles: Made on Merseyside."
This soup-to-nuts film covers the Fab Four from their childhoods through the onset of Beatlemania, The extensive original and archive footage of those (including original drummer Randolph Peter Best) who know the band members best (no pun intended) provides The True Liverpool Story as to John Lennon et al. Learning so much about these true music-industry pioneers is fascinating, The fairly well-known story of their playing always small and often disgusting clubs in England and Germany before making significant professional progress is highly relevant today. The assertion that a post-adolescent who makes it through a few rounds of auditions and then wins a contest that lasts another few weeks is an "American Idol" is absurd. Properly achieving that status requires many years of much harder work; sob stories that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with musical talent are COMPLETELY irrelevant, Paul McCartney inadvertently provides the most amusing moment in this film that achieves the genre ideal of being highly entertaining and educational. His recently revealing an intimate moment with John Lennon early in their careers puts his telling of a "you show me yours, and I'll show you mine" moment with that bandmate in a different perspective. Seemingly lifelong friends Len Garry and Colin Hanton, who play in the pre-"Beatles" band "The Quarrymen," are the most entertaining of the seemingly cast of 100s of talking heads in "Beatles." They discuss Lennon having a more privileged childhood than he presents to the world. This is only the tip of the iceberg as to their tales of the man behind the myth. Much of the fun of this portion of the film relates to stories about the antics of Lennon during the salad days of the band. Suffice it to say that his mooning a German audience for a prolonged period is not his most offensive behavior during that stage of his career, Best (and his mother Mona Best) offers detailed insight on how he comes to join the band; this literally seems to come down to Ringo Starr working and playing better with the other lads than his predecessor. This is not to mention Starr also having a more compatible look. A more amusing aspect of this is the stories that stage mother Mona Best is a pre-Yoko Yoko as to the boys. Along the lines of appearance, the secretary of the group tells of preserving and labeling the hair of the boys to send to fans. The liner notes of these musing on this film is that the story of how "The Beatles" come to be is as interesting as their music. It is equally awesome that the film captures and assembles the memories of those who were there before they no longer are here.
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