MEET THE MAHARISHI
Canadian doc tells the personal story of hanging with The Beatles in India
In 1968, when Canadian filmmaker Paul Saltzman was 23, he — wait for it! — he met The Beatles. In India. He'd gone to the ashram of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, hoping Transcendental Meditation (TM) could cure his broken heart, after his girlfriend had left him.
It worked. He learned TM, and he made four fab new friends, British musicians who happened to be there at the same time. He took photos of them.
Meeting The Beatles in India is Saltzman's recollections of those salad days. It's a personal documentary but also a problematic one. Morgan Freeman is listed as narrator but pops up only briefly, delivering the most clichéd narration. “India, home of Gandhi and non-violence,” that kind of thing.
The rest of time it's Saltzman in voice-over, sometimes backed by animated re-enactments, and often resorting to long stretches of “then he said, and then I said ...”
The photos, capturing The Beatles at a high point in their creative lives but also relaxed and candid around their mild-mannered Canadian friend, are stunning.
But the rest of the 82-minute documentary sometimes feels like so much filler. Here's David Lynch, discussing the benefits of TM. Meet Rikki Cook, whose interest in big-game hunting didn't win him many friends at the ashram, although he did become the inspiration for John Lennon's song The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill. (Presumably for licensing reasons, we never hear any actual Beatles music.)
The results are a touch helter-skelter, with just enough to hold the attention of Beatles fans. But some of Saltzman's epiphanies are less impressive than he would have us believe. He remembers George Harrison telling him the Beatles had all the wealth they could want, but that it was no guarantee of joy or affection.
True, but the band had already released Can't Buy Me Love four years earlier.
Meeting the Beatles in
India can be streamed through blueicedocs.com and hotdocs.ca. cknight@postmedia.com twitter.com/chrisknightfilm