Meeting the Beatles in India
Who wouldn’t like Morgan Freeman to narrate your home movies? All you need to make that happen is a trove of photographs taken during the week you spent hanging out with The Beatles in India during their historic two-month stay with transcendental meditation (TM) guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
“Home movies” is a misnomer, since TV producer and documentary filmmaker Paul Saltzman didn’t have any film footage of his 1968 encounter. Instead, Saltzman commissioned drawings and sketch-like animations of his memories, doing his best to stretch a few dozen images and seven days of memories into a full-length documentary.
It is a great story, like something out of Zelig: Saltzman, then in his 20s, manages to get himself to India, in search of inner peace, and winds up at the gate of Maharishi, asking for TM lessons. He’s told the ashram is closed, because The Beatles are inside, so he sleeps in a tent outside the gate for eight days, waiting. And finally, they let him in.
The Beatles — along with their girlfriends and wives, plus Mia Farrow, Mike Love, and others in their party — quickly befriend Saltzman, who seems nonthreatening. They all spend a week meditating and hanging out and having retrospectively profound talks, and the days are meticulous reconstructed by Saltzman with his photos, animations, and interviews. The band is writing the songs that will become the White Album, so Beatles fans may find transcendental joy in learning the origins of many of these tunes (although Beatles scholars have told all these tales previously).
Saltzman interviews himself, his daughter, Beatles experts, and — inexplicably — meditation fan David Lynch, the film director, but only the narrative about meeting the The Beatles has any real weight to it. Watching Saltzman sort through his mildewed Beatles LPs or trade conflicting memories with his daughter on the Santa Monica Pier is less captivating.
If you love The Beatles or transcendental meditation, this is a must-see movie, although it has no real global insights into either subject. And if you really love The Beatles and TM, Saltzman also has a limited edition book of his story and his photographs available in $325 and $875 editions. Have at it.
Grade: C. Not rated, but PG equivalent. Available September 11 via the Fine Arts Theatre’s Virtual Cinema streaming service.
(Photo courtesy of PaulSaltzman.com)
