With a little help from their friends...

The Beatles: Get Back (Docuseries; 2021)
Disney Plus

Imagine working around Saville Row, London, on 31st January 1969. You step out for lunch and hear a loud commotion with music emanating from atop one of the roofs. Upon enquiring, you find out that the Beatles were performing live. It was destined to be their last public performance before the group disbanded.

A year previously, they had come out with the eponymous 'White Album' to soaring success. The White Album, their ninth album, a double album, was named simply because of the colour of the album's jacket. The White Album was a phenomenal hit, but it was rumoured that the four members had serious creative differences that most of the time, they had to record separately. It is said Yoko Ono's persistent presence in the studio was their sore point, together with Paul McCartney's domineering attitude. 

Partly encouraged by the skyrocketing sales of the 'White Album', they were coaxed to get together for a brainstorming session. The plan was to have a public concert and to pen new songs. The getting together was a volatile business. The idea of breaking up as a group was still in the air. Their previous agreed arrangement of not allowing spouses into the studio was not followed. Yoko was no mere expressionless fly on the wall making some occasional eerily high-pitched screech; she was more of a leech clinging on to the juices of John Lennon. George Harrison constantly expressed his displeasure over Paul's vetoing of his creative ideas. It led to its zenith when George quit the band, only to be cajoled back to write songs together for their next project. The project is another problem. The band was unsure what it wanted to create. After yo-yoing between cutting singles and albums, they finally decided to make a movie/documentary, 'Let it Be'.

"Let it Be' came to fruition in 1970, and a few months, the Beatles split.

60 hours of video and 150-hour audio recordings were left in the estates of the remaining Beatles and their estates. To keep the band's legacy alive and make some moolah on the side, Peter Jackson was hired to make a 'documentary within a documentary'. He managed to squeeze it down to ~7.5 hours.

The documentary brings viewers up close into the recording studios to show just how talented the Fab Four were. Just how easily their creative juices flow and how seamlessly song lyrics and melodies welled up.

Get Back!

It is interesting how the 'Get Back' came to be. It was a time when the newspapers were full of reports of the Labour Party's stand against South Indian immigration. The demonstrators' banners screamed 'get back' and 'go back to where you belong'. So, when Paul saw these headlines, out rolled 'Get Back' and veiled reference to protest against Labour's stance. Looking at the whole, it may be a swipe at counterculture. Jo Jo was a weed-smoking hippy and transgender Sweet Loretta Martin. Interestingly, in the documentary, every time Paul sang the verse 'go back to where you belong', he looked at Yoko as if mocking her presence there. Maybe, he is telling her to go back to Japan or leave the Beatles alone!

One must remember that the footages are not raw material but recorded with the 'actors' knowledge. They were aware that they were being taped, sometimes breaking the fourth wall. Hence, they must appear on tape to do the socially accepted thing.

What I learned after watching Fab Four's behaviour, I gather that Paul is a prolific writer of songs but somewhat wants his way of doing things. George feels stunted as a musician, Lennon is too profoundly into Yoko, and Ringo just gets along with a little help from his friends.

(P.S. Remember 1995 when the world got all excited when the Beatles' old recordings re-surfaced, and we were all waiting eagerly to hear the unheard versions of the same old Beatles' song? Well, to the uninitiated, this whole exercise of sitting through a seven and a half-hour band recording session, brainstorming, talking, arguing and singing the same song, again and again, may sound uninspiring. To a true blue Beatles fan or an occasional music lover, both the Beatles' Anthologies albums and this docuseries are treasure troves of all the nostalgia and musical genius embedded in Beatlemania.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Houston, the Eagle has landed!

Insignia of Apollo 11.

It all started as squabbles between brothers. Much like Kane and Abel, both brothers thought their respective brand of economic reforms was the way forward. One believed in freedom and liberty whilst the other insists that discipline and order bring the best in people. The world soon became divided into two blocks - the vibrant capitalists and the red communists. 

Who said competition is terrible? Did it not surge to dominate over the other? Both tried to showcase their achievements; USA and USSR became the leaders of their respective sects. Industrialisation was viewed upon as the clear proof of success, and soon, the craze of space exploration became the next in-thing.

At one time, it appeared like the Russians were winning with hands down. They had managed to send Laika, the space dog to outer space in 1957. Soon they managed to send Yuri Gagarin (1961) and Valentina Tereshkova (1963, a female cosmonaut) to orbit Earth.

View of Earth aboard Apollo 8 on
Xmas eve 1968. 

This made JFK, in 1962, famously put a challenge to America to land a man to on the Moon by the end of the decade. His seminal speech, given at Rice University boldly proclaimed, "We choose to go to the moon... not because they are easy, but because they are hard..." awoke a nation to singlemindedly venture into space. 

With a chest heaving with hope and accomplishment, the baby boomers, after having fought a world war for a second time which killed off and incapacitated a right proportion of their men in their productive years, raised to the occasion.

Laica, Space Dog (1957)

The Herculean task was dangerous, with many technicality difficulties. So many things had to be sorted out - propulsion forces, complex mathematic calculations, life support, insulation, lunar landing and safe return of astronauts. If that was not enough, faulty electrical wiring caused a fire in Apollo 1 even before launch killing all three crewmen, put a damper on the whole Apollo project. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the Americans slowly sprang back into action. Subsequent launches sequentially took crafts to space, to orbit Earth, to navigate around the moon and finally set up a dress rehearsal before finally landing Man on the Moon on 20th July 1969.

After the launch and separation of the spacecraft from the rocket to enter the lunar orbit, the most significant challenge happened in the last thirteen minutes of Eagle's (the Lunar Module) descent onto the moon. 

The computers which controlled the lunar mission were primitive. Humans were just dabbling with computers. In fact, most of the engineers involved in the endeavour were clueless of the word software in computers. The concept of digital portable general computer was alien but was installed in the spacecraft. The data of information carried in the two computers sent in Apollo rocket is comparable to present-day mobile devices. As Armstrong and Aldrin were on their descent, the fourth astronaut (i.e. the computer) gave an unknown alarm - 1202. The third astronaut was, of course, Collin who was in the mothership Columbia orbiting the moon.

Communication between Mission Control and Apollo was painfully inadequate with a lot of static. 

After a moment of uncertainty, it was determined that the computer was screaming out that it had too many commands to respond. That was all. The interesting fact about the engineers assigned at the Mission Control in Houston was that their average age was just 27! Imagine these young punk deciding the safety of the astronaut and shouldering the whole of NASA's dreams.

Then it came to their attention that there were boulders on their planned landing site. Armstrong had to steer the vessel skilfully calculating the descent on the window panel - digital assistance was still primitive. Then he realised that he was running dangerously low on fuel as he found a suitable landing site. He was left with 18 seconds amount of fuel only at docking. 

The drama came to a joyous ending as Armstrong announced, "Houston, the Eagle has landed!" The rest is history as Armstrong laid his foot on the lunar soil to proclaim the now immortalised statement, 'a small footprint for man, a giant step for mankind!'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07grkvh

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Keep calm, or appear so!

Nirai Kudam (நிறை குடம், Full Pitcher, Tamil; 1969)

Sivaji Ganesan was at the zenith of his career. It was at a time when almost every month saw the release of one of his movies. It must surely be a record of sorts. The 'modern' world may accuse him and the films of his era as melodramatic, stereotyping and over-acting. His loyal fans, however, to date, place him and his skills in a pedestal so high that cannot be filled by anyone yet to be born.

Being so prolific must have its downside. This film must provide the testimony of such an endeavour. The story is such loosely knitted that defies logic; that a group of three final year medical students (a brother-sister pair and her boyfriend) should engage in such a foolhardy prank that kills one of them and blinds the other. The girl blames her boyfriend for her brother's death and her loss of vision. The truth of the matter is kept a secret until the remaining student becomes a successful ophthalmic surgeon and discover a ground-breaking surgery to reverse the blindness. Along the way, we see family melodramas, hiding of truths, testing of human relationships and the third medical student masquerading as somebody else and marrying the blind student without she having an iota of suspicion that his voice and probably body scent may connect him to the person she abhors so much. Along the way comes the mandatory comedy reliefs, this time from the Cho-Manorama combination. Sivaji, Vanishree and Muthuraman take the lead.

I suppose one should not ask too many questions when watching mainstream Indian movies. One should enjoy the message, the value and the traditional Indian philosophies imbibed in its storyline. Perhaps, as the title suggests, a person in power should not be too boisterous or hellbent on creating mayhem. Like a pitcher (container) which is filled to the brim, he should be quiet. An empty vessel makes all the noise. Everything will reach a steady state. We do not need people on the top of the perch also be screaming blood or revenge when things go wrong. Those in the higher echelons should appear calm. No problem cannot be solved. Everything would fall into place eventually. What we need is to a step back, assess, put on the thinking caps, re-evaluate and execute.

On the other hand, the saying 'Nirai Kudam' (நிறை குடம்) may refer to completion. In traditional South Indian auspicious functions, a metallic vase is filled with water almost to the brim and is adorned with garlands, coconut, mango leaves and is inscribed upon it sacred symbols to invoke the feminine forces of Nature. I wonder how this is related to the title of this movie.  

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/riflerangeboy/