The '60s Up Close

Rating: 8/10 (14 June 2009)

Its been said that if you remember the '60s you weren't really there. Well, I was there, in many of the same places and circumstances this film covers, and let me say: It is real. Indeed, it is the first 'true' film about the '60s that I've seen. True, not to fact (the story is fictional), but to the spirit of the times. That it mixes romance with this truthfulness of spirit is its strength.
The film works on many levels. It is a concept film - one must go in accepting this and making some allowance for it - but the too-real '60s situations of the principle characters holds it together.
The working in the extensive Beatles songbook is amazingly natural and in most cases unforced. Indeed, after seeing this film one '60s musician friend of mine said that she only now fully appreciates what great song writers Lennon, McCartney and Harrison really were.
As to my own reaction - I was so stunned by the emotions the film raised that I had to sit in silence for some minutes when it ended to get control of my feelings. And I must add that this was not due so much to my connection with the music as with my connection with those extraordinarily painful times.