Who wouldn’t like Morgan Freeman to narrate their home movies? All you need to make that happen is a wealth of photographs taken during the week you spent hanging out with the Beatles in India during their historic two-month stay with Transcendental Meditation guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
“Home movies” is a misnomer, since TV producer and documentary filmmaker Paul Saltzman (Prom Night in Mississippi) didn’t have any film footage of his 1968 encounter. Instead, he commissioned drawings and sketchlike 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 the 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 inside.
The Beatles — along with Mia Farrow, Mike Love and others in their party — quickly befriend Saltzman, and they spend a week meditating and hanging out and having retrospectively profound talks, all meticulously reconstructed by Saltzman. He interviews himself, his daughter, Beatles experts and — inexplicably — meditation fan David Lynch (yes, that one), but only the narrative about the Beatles encounter has any real weight to it. Watching Saltzman sort through his mildewed Beatles LPs 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.
Available to rent starting Sept. 11 via fineartstheatre.com
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