Rrrrroll up for the Mystery Tour!

I don't even want to try and guess how many times I've watched The Beatles Anthology since it originally aired in nightly installments on ABC when I was ten years old. I can fondly remember sitting on the staircase of my parents' house when I was supposed to be sleeping, revelling in the gentle lull of George Harrison's Liverpudlian accent, wistfully longing for a bedtime better-suited to my Beatles-related needs. Actually, I ever-craftily feigned illness and insomnia as an excuse to stay up and watch for longer. I would not be surprised to find out that I've watched the Anthology upwards of a hundred times.

Then there's A Hard Day's Night: the best Beatles movie to play for friends who don't really care about the Beatles, the film of theirs that holds up best outside the landscape of the Beatles. Incisive, caustic, and charming, teeming with the classically goonish Lennon comic rhetoric, I'd venture to guess that I've seen it probably around fifty times. Yes: fifty times. And as for Help? It's a little trite, of course, but totally worth it for the parade of unsurpassable Technicolor images it imparts upon the desperate fan: the dazed, sleepy-eyed mid-period Beatles scampering around, clumsy on skis, beguiling on bicycles. The great tragedy of the 21st century is how Help remains unavailable on DVD; after waiting six-plus years for its inevitable release, I recently gave up and eBay-ed a VHS copy in order to scratch my long-standing itch. As such, I'd guess I've seen Help a comparatively scanty ten to fifteen times. But don't fret: now that I finally own it, I'm planning on making up for lost time, and stat.

Which leads me to what I actually want to talk about (all apologies, nothing makes me digress like The Beatles): the Fab Four's final foray into the cinescape of their day (excepting Yellow Submarine, which had nearly zero Beatles involvement--it's not even their real voices!--and therefore doesn't count): Magical Mystery Tour. Shockingly enough, I've seen Magical Mystery Tour only twice, and one of those two times was last night. Considered by the most erudite of Beatles scholars to be the one wayward weak point in an otherwise flawless ten-year run (okay, well, there's also the disaster that is Rocky Raccoon, but whatever, they can't all be winners), Magical Mystery Tour is primarily a Paul McCartney vanity project. The film is bogged down by endless footage of Paul being Paul, and dazzingly so: five straight minutes of Paul exuding charisma at the peak of his hotness in the foothills of the French countryside, soundtracked by the sonic reverie of The Fool on the Hill; Paul excelling at the Vaudevillian choreography accompanying Your Mother Should Know; Paul play-acting at impish cuteness whilst wearing a wizard costume. The movie's attempts at plot and narrative are boring, impossible to follow, self-indulgent and generally unfunny. This being said, I've always been of the belief that Magical Mystery Tour is only relevant when functioning within the same context as other cinematic icons of psychspolitation, like the Monkees' staggeringly-trivial-but-aesthetically-pleasing-nonetheless Head (which is probably an MMT rip-off, come to think of it) or Wild in the Streets, aptly described by the Internet Movie Database as an "unintentionally funny and moronic social satire" (the soundtrack, however, rules: the premise of the movie is that Max Frost, a turned-on 22-yearr-old rock star, becomes President of the United States, relegating the over-thirty crowd to Dystopian "retirement homes" and forcing them to take LSD. His fake band, Max Frost and the Troopers, have a couple of bona fide hits under their belt: Nary a DJ night has passed where I haven't been compelled to play their swelling Fourteen or Fight).

Last night, however, I happened to perceive Magical Mystery Tour in something of a new light. Yes, of course it is still undeniably weak (though the ever-cocksure McCartney insists in Anthology footage that it was a significant inspiriation to Spielberg et al; actually a work of genius if you squint your eyes and cock your head a little to the right), but there are moments of brilliance within it. I mean, come on, it's the Beatles! The first scene that really thrilled me takes place on the (Magical Mystery) tour bus: John Lennon and George Harrison sit together; a young girl (Little Nicola, maybe four or five) sits upon John's lap, and he regales her with kooky, screwy wisecracks and by lampooning with a red balloon. This particular scene immaculately demonstrates Lennon's usually-obscured softer, more tender side: while perhaps my obsessive hero-worship of John Lennon is a little, er, ridiculous and overblown (among other things), this unprecedented glimpse into his fatherly benevolence nearly brought a tear to my eye. Sadly, this scene is nowhere to be found within the expansive archives of Youtube.

However, the second scene that effectively blew my mind is in fact available for all to see. This clip, a proto-music video of George Harrison performing his heavy-lidded, melancholic Blue Jay Way, embodies the very crux of my aesthetic sensibilities: Very Hot Boy with Very Good Bone Structure; lush, phantasmagorical, in-your-face psychedelic renderings; great representations of the daffy, characteristically-George personal style I mused about a few weeks ago; and a hearty dose of good-old "The Beatles being scrappy and clowning around boyishly". The sheer beauty of this clip transcends the otherwise middling bulk of Magical Mystery Tour, and, in my opinion, justifies its very existence. When the BBC initially aired MMT on Boxing Day of 1967 to rather harsh reviews, one particularly snotty newsman declared that the movie "shattered the myth of the Beatles' genius forever". But for me, the inclusion of this clip serves as a reminder that amidst the undeniable mediocrity of the film, the Beatles' relentless creativity and perspicacity were merely dormant: only sleeping if you will.

Posted by Laura in Favorite Things
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