![]() ![]() McCartney’s future wife, Linda Eastman, lingers a little longer, occasionally circulating and photographing the band. ![]() Her image contrasts with that of other Beatles associates: modest white women in stylish outfits who occasionally swoop in with kisses, nod encouragingly, and sneak off discreetly. In his 1964 text project “Grapefruit”, a kind of recipe book for staging artistic experiences, he instructs his audience to “look not at Rock Hudson but only at Doris Day”, and in “The Beatles: Get Back”, skillfully redirects the eye away from the band and towards herself. “I was afraid of being something like that.” Later, he would dedicate his 1973 spiked song “Potbelly Rocker” to “nameless rocker’s wives.” In a 1997 interview, she commented on the situation of women in rock in the 1960s: “My first impression was that they were all wives, as if they were sitting in the next room while the guys talked,” she said. For her part, she was attentive to the possibility of escaping from the typical role of the artist’s wife. In the documentary, McCartney politely complains that his composition with Lennon is interrupted by Ono’s omnipresence. Ono did not “disband the Beatles.” (If Lennon’s estrangement from the band was influenced by his desire to explore other pursuits, including his personal and creative relationship with Ono, that was his decision.) But she intruded. ‘Drive my car’: In this quiet Japanese masterpiece, a widower travels to Hiroshima to direct an experimental version of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”.‘He passed’: Set in the 1920s, the film focuses on two African-American women, friends since childhood, who can and do present themselves as white.‘Spencer’: Kristen Stewart plays a distraught and rebellious Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín’s response to “The Crown.”.‘Summer of the soul’: Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Mavis Staples and others shine in Questlove’s documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival.I was seeing intimate and lost images of the most famous band in the world preparing for their final performance, and I couldn’t help but see Yoko Ono sitting idly by. My attention kept drifting to his corner of the frame. But as the hours passed and Ono stayed, painting at an easel, chewing on a cake, flipping through a Lennon fan magazine, I was blown away by his endurance, then fascinated by the provocation of his existence, and finally dazzled by his performance. Why is she there? I pleaded with my television. The vast ensemble only emphasizes the ridiculousness of its proximity. When George Harrison leaves, briefly leaving the band, there is Ono, crying incoherently into his microphone.Īt first, Ono’s omnipresence in the documentary struck me as strange, even disconcerting. Later, when the group squeezes into a recording booth, Ono is there, wedged between Lennon and Ringo Starr, wordlessly unwrapping a piece of gum and moving it between Lennon’s fingers. Lennon slides behind the piano and Ono is there, her head hovering over his shoulder. When the band starts with “Don’t Let Me Down”, Ono is there, reading a newspaper. When Paul McCartney begins to play “I Have a Feeling,” Ono is there, sewing a furry object on his lap. He perches within reach of John Lennon, his bewildered face turned toward him like a plant growing toward the light. ![]() At the beginning of “The Beatles: Get Back,” Peter Jackson’s nearly eight-hour documentary on the making of the album “Let It Be,” the band forms a closed circle on the corner of a movie set. ![]()
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