Needless to say, there has been a bit of obsession over The Beatles for decades now. So many books and movies. One would think there were no new avenues to explore in 1994, and yet Backbeat is, I believe, the first movie to concern their pre-fame years in Hamburg and the only true “fifth Beatle”, Stuart Sutcliffe.
I’m not sure this was a story that needed to be told, or perhaps it is the way this movie tells it that isn’t very compelling.
The first issue is the casting. Three of the characters on-screen are among the most famous faces and voices of the 20th century. The young men playing John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison have an unusual resemblance that is like the distorted memory of somebody you haven’t seen in decades. They have the voices and some of the mannerisms down right, at least.
Unfortunately, the decision was made to have others with entirely different voices do the singing. The effect is horribly jarring and it was a distraction through the runtime.
Stephen Dorff plays Sutcliffe and he’s…OK. His performance isn’t bad in any way I can put my finger on, but something still didn’t ring true for me. It seemed too “actorly”, if that makes any sense.
Sheryl Lee fares somewhat better as his German girlfriend, Astrid Kirchherr. In a way, this is mostly her story, as she took legendary photos of the group while they were in Hamburg and most accounts of this era seem to be from her. It was good to see Lee in a role different from Twin Peak’s Laura Palmer, though it isn’t that terribly different.
That’s because she still is reduced to hysterics in the movie’s third act, when it makes an unearned and seemingly unmotivated hard turn into melodrama. This happens after Sutcliffe has left the band, and so the group leaves him to return to England. Sutcliffe stays behind with Astrid and demonstrates increasingly strange and violent behavior.
There’s not much more I care to say about this picture, except there were some other aspects of it which stuck in my craw. I have always heard the Hamburg bars The Beatles played in were incredibly scuzzy and dangerous, yet the sets here don’t convey that environment. Everything looks too clean and safe. Also, I didn’t care for some lines of dialogue that anticipate later Beatles tracks. It felt too on-the-nose to me to have characters casually talk about “hard night and days” or “playing in a band eight days a week.”
Obviously, I didn’t like Backbeat very much. I’m sure the hearts of the filmmakers were in the right place, but I don’t feel what is shown warrants putting a spotlight on what is not generally regarded as a key period of the world’s most famous band.
Dir: Iain Softley
Starring Stephen Dorff, Sheryl Lee, Ian Hart
Watched on Shout Factory blu-ray