(Reviews of My Old Ass; A World Apart; The Teacher; and One Hand Clapping)
MY OLD ASS.
Having made her directorial debut by examining a student's psychological response to a school shooting in The Fallout (2021), Canadian actress-turned-director Megan Park takes a lighter look at the traumas thrown up by teenagehood in My Old Ass. Given that she made her mark in the TV series, The Secret Life of the American Teenager (2008-13), Park should know what she's talking about and there's much to enjoy and ponder in this quirky time-folding comedy.
Ignoring the family waiting at home with a surprise 18th birthday cake, Elliott Labrant (Maisy Stella) bounces a motorboat across an Lake Muskoka in Ontario to see barista Chelsea (Alexandra Rivera) to announce that she's leaving for college in 22 days. They kiss in the backroom before Elliott rejoins besties Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks) for a night of camping and shrooming a small island. As her friends start tripping, Elliott feels left out, until she's told to chill out by her 39 year-old self (Aubrey Plaza).
Convinced by a childhood rib scar (but not spooked enough by the future loss of a pinkie toe at Ruthie's second wedding), Elliott starts asking questions that her older self opts not to answer in case they set off some kind of butterfly effect. She does, however, reveal that she's a PhD student and has come to accept the fact she looks like her mom. Older Elliott also warns her teenage self to steer clear of someone named Chad. As she doesn't know anyone called that, Elliott starts to drift off and hardly hears a lament about the speeding up of time with age.
Returning home next morning, Elliott half-apologises to mom Kathy (Maria Dizzia) for missing tea and almost forgets to help dad Tom (Alain Goulem) on his cranberry farm because she had a boat rendezvous with Chelsea. However, while skinny-dipping, Elliott encounters Chad (Percy Hynes White), a long-haired dude type who has come to work on the farm. In panic, Elliott flees and is shocked to find that her older self has left her number on her phone under the name, `My Old Ass' (because Elliott had wanted to touch it after they had snatched an experimental self-on-self kiss). MOA reminds Elliott to spend more time with younger, Saoirse Ronan-obsessed sibling, Spencer (Carter Trozzolo), and middle golf-addicted brother, Max (Seth Isaac Johnson). But she also reminds her to keep away from Chad.
Despite spending more time with Max and her mom, this proves difficult, as Chad keeps popping up when she's swimming and he fixes her boat motor. MOA despairs of her and again tells Elliott to stay away, no matter how goofy his charm. She also sympathises with her confusion over love, as she suddenly feels less drawn towards her dream girl and wakes with a start from a dream in which Chelsea turns into Chad during a canoodle. Her sense of disorientation increases when Chad comes along on the golf buggy and lets slip that her parents are planning to sell the farm. Annoyed because Max already knew, Elliott complains to her father, who retorts that all she has ever talked about it getting away from this backwater. Shrugging, she protests that she might have wanted to leave, but that was on the understanding the farm would always be there to come back to.
Feeling adrift because MOA has stopped returning her calls and texts, Elliott finds Ro to ask if she has any more mushrooms, in the hope that MOA will reappear. Instead, Chad strolls towards the campfire because Ro had messaged him because Elliott had said something about letting him into her life. He encourages her to sing Justin Bieber's `One Less Lonely Girl' because she had always wanted to be him and not the girls receiving roses in the video. Ro laughs when Elliott confesses next morning over breakfast and tells her to listen to her heart when she admits to having feelings for Chad, even though she had always thought she was a lesbian.
Following a charming chat with Kathy, in which she recalls the last night she had to rock her to sleep, Elliott introduces Chad to Ruthie and Ro and takes her boat out for a final spin before she sells it. The motor falls off and they are stranded in the rain on a boathouse in the lake. She reveals she's gay, but is having feelings that a friend has told her to fight. He listens quietly and kisses her after discovering they're going to be at the same university in Toronto. Elliott admits to being a `dick' virgin and they giggle.
They're still smoochy when they part in the garden next morning, although Elliott's embarrassed in case her family sees them together. However, it's MOA who spots them and she chastises Elliott for doing the one thing she asked her not to do. She explains that she had tried to call, but couldn't help falling in love with Chad and demands to know why she shouldn't. Reluctantly, MOA reveals that Chad dies young and that Elliott will be left with the pain of loss and the knowledge that she'll never feel so intensely again. But Elliott refuses to miss out on the good times they would have and MOA compliments her for being young and dumb because there's nothing worse than being trapped in the past or too timid to embrace the future.
At that moment, Chad returns with a t-shirt he had waltzed off with and Elliott is amazed that he can seen MOA. She introduces herself as Uncle Michelle and she is so touched by the way in which Elliott and Chad interact that she makes her excuses after one last hug with the man she had adored. On the night before she leaves, having helped with the cranberry crop, Elliott listens to a voice message from her older self commending her for having the courage to be herself and seize the day with Chad - although she does remind her to wear her retainer and moisturise before she rings off.
Closing on Elliott going for a last mazey ride in her boat, this utterly delightful picture fades from its idyllic rustic setting and into that place in the mind's eye where guilty pleasures reside. Even taken on its own terms, this is hardly faultless. It's not in any way innovative stylewise or particularly profound in its observations about youth, friends, family, identity, or desire. It just makes sense for much of the time - and wisely never tries to explain the outwardly implausible - as Megan Park's unassumingly insightful and funny script repeatedly hits right notes in the right order.
So do her excellent cast and composers Jaco Caraco and Tyler Hilton, whose tinkly score is the audio equivalent to Kristen Correll's shimmering imagery. Aubrey Plaza is positively Parker Poseyesque as the sardonic jaunter from the future, whose world-weariness is tinged with a hint of regret and envy for the all mistakes that Elliott is still to make, while Percy Hynes White beguiles as the beanpole Keanu Culkin hybrid that American cinema has been missing all these years.
But the standout is singer Maisy Stella on her feature debut, as she captures Elliott's confusions and complexities, as she gradually transitions from self-obsessed to self-aware. In the process, she consigns the manic pixie dream girl to cinematic history. While her byplay with Plaza and White is sharp, it's the heart-to-hearts with her brother and mother that give Elliott greater depth than the usual teenpic heroine. She also takes on board the wisdom she acquires without relinquishing her impulsive spirit, as her experience has less changed her than made her more herself than she ever was. And that's something we should all aspire to - even the grumpy old men who have scowled about a film (produced by Margot Robbie's LuckyChap company) that's not aimed at them. Perhaps they're just too acutely aware that `the only thing you can't get back is time'.
A WORLD APART.
A decade has passed since the launch of the excellent CinemaItaliaUK initiative and it returns for another season with Riccardo Milani's Un mondo a parte/A World Apart. This reunites the director with Antonio Albanese after their collaborations on Mom or Dad?, Like a Cat on a Highway (both 2017), and Thank You Guys (2021), the latter of which also had a classroom setting, albeit in a prison rather than a picturesque town in the Abruzzo.
Detesting the kids he teaches at the rough Alberto Moravia School in the outskirts of Rome, Michele Cortese (Antonio Albanese) jumps at the opportunity to make a temporary transfer to Institute Cesidio Gentile, a school in the southern hamlet of Rupe (population 378) that was named after Jurico the shepherd poet. Hoping his new students will be receptive to his ideas on climate change and sustainability, Michele is taken aback when his car is snowed in and he has to be rescued by Principal Agnese (Virginia Raffaele), as watching wolves howl in the nearby woods.
Michele is greeted at the door by the wizened Nunzio (Sergio Saltarelli) and the youthfully enthusiastic Maria Antonietta (Alessandra Barbonetti), who whisper to Agnese that he won't last a month. Unfortunately, this is a common problem with substitutes at the school, which teaches 6-10 year-olds in a single classroom, as there are so few kids in a backwater that struggles to retain its residents that the local education authority is keen to close it down.
There are only seven pupils in their blue pullovers, but they are well versed in dealing with temps and give Michele a crash course in Jurico, the history of the school, and how lessons work with three age bands in one group. Quirina (Donatella La Cesa) and Titina (Bianca Maria Macro) are inseparable, even though their fathers are rival mayoral candidates for the right and left. The fathers of Aniceto (Gianmarco Borsa) and Concezio (Guglielmo Casale) are also at loggerheads, but Filomena (Solidea Pistilli) is happy that her mother drives the school bus. Sabatino (Andrea Decina Di Pirro) is the quiet one and while Cesidio (Enzo De Sanctis) may prefer the local dialect to Italian, he's something of a computer whizz.
Over lunch, Agnese explains that she still keeps an eye on her alumni when they need a hand and she asks Michele to cover her lesson while she pops out. He introduces the class to ecology and the idea that the planet can be saved before supper and Quirina explains it at the dinner table to her right-wing father, who promptly complains to Agnese.
Shown to his lodgings by Nunzio, Michele is baffled by the local dialect and spends a cold night with wolves howling outside because he's too proud to admit that he doesn't know how to light the stove. He's just as clueless in a sex education lesson the following day, as Agnese outlines the various gender identities and Michele gets embarrassed when Titina points out that out of all the options, only he and Agnese can have babies. When he pays a call on Filomena's mother, he finds her milking the sheep and he gets his shoes covered in manure, which is still reeking when he returns to school in time to upset Titana's parents by encouraging their son to work the land.
After Cesidio calls round to show him how to light his stove, Michele goes to the nearby town of Pescasseroli to get some boots and a warm coat. He takes the class outside to listen to birdsong, but they know the calls better than he does - although they're impressed by his cricket impression. Saddened by the numerous abandoned buildings around the village, Michele promises the children that the school will never close because their futures are important. When he asks what they want to be, however, he is dismayed when they all say `YouTuber'.
Saddened by the kids all being so resigned to the school's closure, Michele tries to broach the subject with Agnese when they visit Dulio (Duilio Antonucci), one of the few young people to have stayed and tried to make a go of the family farm. She's pleased that he has been smitten by the village, but reluctant to discuss the subject. However, he follows her when she drives into the hills and finds her in the ruins of Sperone, the school from the time Rupe was thriving and she recalls the sadness she felt at its closure due to dwindling numbers. She had vowed this would never happen again, but she has been told that Cesidio Gentile will close its doors in June.
They book an appointment with Superintendent Luigia (Franca Di Cicco), who tells them that it's all about numbers and notes there hasn't been a baby boom since Italy won the World Cup in 2006. She tells them they need four new names before the registration deadline and Agnese is concerned that Gaetano (Corrado Oddi), the principal at Castel Romito, and local mayor Ezechia (Sergio Meogrossi) will gloat if they get to take over her students. On seeing Ukrainian refugees arriving in Italy, however, Michele has an idea and Agnese is all in favour of rounding up a few families to boost their tally. She also sends Nunzio and Maria Antonietta to the Maghrebi camp at La Fucino to see if they can find any school age kids and she warns them not to let Ezechia see what they are doing or he'll try to poach them.
Having secured the support of the mayor, the police chief, the local tourist co-ordinator, and the parish priest, Agnese and Michele make ready to find some Ukrainians. Ezechia tells his cousin not to clear the roads with his snowplough so that they can't get to the town, but he ignores the order as he's tired of being told what to do. While Nunzio finds a boy in La Fucino, Agnese gets three Ukrainians and the class agrees to welcome them if it means saving the school.
The brass band plays as the minibus pulls up and the new children take their places at the desks added to the classroom. All goes well, but Michele overhears Agnese arguing with her philandering husband on the phone and the glance they exchange suggests they are starting to have feelings for one another. These increase when Michele dives into the reservoir when Concezio's sister jumps off the bridge after a row with her parents and - when one of the Ukrainian families is lured away by Ezechia - he hits upon the idea of claiming that Sabatino has a learning disability because the district is compelled to keep the school open for students with special needs. The village vet signs him off so that all is legal and above board.
Distraught to hear that approval for Sabatino's case will be down to Gaetano, Agnese and Michele wind up in bed together after it snow heavily and she can't get home. Arriving next morning, they are surprised to find that approval has been granted and Cesidio admits hacking into Gaetano's e-mail and appending the medical certificate he had deliberately left off. Ezechia is furious with him for blundering, but Agnese is delighted by Cesidio's ingenuity, as someone with the founder's name has saved the school.
Months pass and the sun shines on a nature ramble in the hills. Michele breaks the news that his temporary appointment ends the next day. He's given a guard of honour by staff, parents, and students, who all rush to hug him. As he drives away, however, and sees Duilio on his tractor and building work ongoing at the abandoned gym and factory. Moreover, he sees the beauty of the hills, with the sheep, deer, bears, and wolves and comes back to tell Agnese and the class that he's staying. The camera turns to the window and the fields below, where Cesidio Gentile is watching his sheep and he wanders into the distance (with one of his poems being recited in voiceover), as his school is in safe hands - for now.
So many films about teachers centre on uncommon outsiders who seek acceptance, gain trust, and inspire students who have been repudiated by everyone else. Riccardo Milani doesn't stray far from the tried and tested here. But it's the institution rather than the individuals that is being written off and this allows Milani to explore the cultural as well as the socio-economic effects of the depopulation of the Italian countryside. He also considers the national response to the ongoing migrant crisis, as well as the status of special needs students in the education system. Yet, these are rather tacked on to flesh out the core idea, as the action become less a story than a case study, in which serial problems arise and have to be surmounted.
Fortunately, Milani hits the Ealing sweet spot in an underdog tale that is made all the more appealing by the savvy of the students, who wind up teaching Michele as much as he does them. In truth, his character is somewhat sketchy, as Milani settles for exploiting audience expectation of Antonio Albanese, who delivers a trademark performance. His rapport with actress-cum-impersonator Virginia Raffaele is undeniably winning. But, while it may also be `a mountain thing', the romance rings rather hollow, again because Agnese is so thinly limned. The other grown-ups are little more than ciphers, with the result that the suicide plunge, the mayoral rivalry, and the generational saga down on the farm can seem contrived. Even the rivalry with the Castel Romito mob is undercooked, even though it raises the odd laugh. Yet so does the footage of the cat playing a keyboard on the screen behind Michele, as he drowns his sorrows in the village bar before having a close encounter of the antlered kind on his way home.
Such moments are evocatively photographed by Saverio Guarna, whose snowscapes are also impressive. We don't quite get a sense of the proximity of the various places and the respective difficulties of access in winter. But the wildlife shots as Michele drives away from Rupe are rather charming, even though they wouldn't be out of place in an anthropomorphised Disney animation. Piernicola Di Muro's score occasionally errs on the sentimental side, but it reinforces the feed good aura that made this such a hit in Italy. Of course, with wife and regular leading lady Paola Cortellesi having made such a notable start to directing career with There's Still Tomorrow (2023), Milani now has a bit of competition on his hands. But he can always be relied upon for genial entertainment with deceptive depth.
THE TEACHER.
With Israel making bellicose noises towards Lebanon, the world's focus has temporarily shifted away from the West Bank. But Farah Nabulsi still has much to reveal about daily life in the enclave in her debut feature, The Teacher, which reunites the Palestinian British writer-director with Saleh Bakri, the star of her 2020 short, The Present, which won a BAFTA and earned an Oscar nomination.
On his drive from the village of Burin to Jenin, teacher Basem El Salah (Saleh Bakri) notices the increased presence of the Israeli Defense Forces. He teaches brothers Yacoub (Mahmoud Bakri) and Adam Haddad (Muhammad Abed El Rahman) and sees potential in the younger of the pair. Having spent time in detention, Yacoub is more difficult to handle and British volunteer counsellor Lisa Collins (Imogen Poots) accepts a lift from Basem to speak to his widowed mother.
En route, Basem stops to speak to a fruit seller (Muayyad Abd Elsamad) and his question about the longevity of apricots clearly relates to the radio news story he has just heard about the arrival of Americans, Simon (Stanley Townsend) and Rachel Cohen (Andrea Irvine), who have come to meet with Elie Lieberman (Paul Herzberg), who is handling the case of their son, Nathaniel, an IDF volunteer who was abducted three years earlier and is now being offered in exchange for 1200 Palestinian prisoners.
As they arrive in Burin, Basem and Lisa see Yacoub arguing with an IDF soldier who has an order to demolish their house. Intervening, Basem reminds Yacoub that he has a record and cannot afford to alienate the IDF, even though he accepts the injustice of his home being reduced to rubble. After supper, Barsem tells Lisa it just happened to be their turn and reveals his own property is under threat. He gives her a book of poetry by Mahmoud Darwish and feels the first stirring of emotion since the death of his wife and teenage son some years before.
The next day, Basem helps the Haddads salvage belongings from the ruins and scolds Yacoub when he calls Lisa `Miss United Nations', when she comes to lend a hand. She urges him to focus on his education, but he darts away when he spots a fire in the olive grove and Lisa is appalled when Yacoub is shot dead by an Israeli settler (Nael Kanj). She puts the family in touch with Israeli lawyer named Feldman (Einat Weizmann), but Adam is unconvinced there is any point until Barsem tells him a story about how an activist stopped his mother from being arrested by the IDF after she had slapped the female settler who had tried to disrupt the olive harvest.
In truth, Basem has little faith in the system, as son Yusuf was jailed with Yacoub and given eight years for throwing stones at the IDF. But he supports Lisa when she tries to coax Adam into coming back to school by describing the sense of injustice she had felt when her sister had been killed by a hit-and-run driver. Indeed, Basem is taken with Lisa and they exchange coy glances when he drives her back to her digs in town.
While being taken to the site where Nathaniel had made a video recording, Simon feels disquiet at the treatment of some Palestinians at an IDF roadblock. But his wife remains angry and places her trust in Lieberman to rescue her boy and punish the perpetrators. They learn that action is imminent, but the hostage has been moved to Basem's basement and he thinks back to his wife leaving him after Yusuf was jailed. He also has to talk Adam out of trying to kill the settler in revenge for his brother and makes him swear to say nothing about the soldier he is guarding (after Adam sees him being smuggled into the house in the dead of night).
The same binoculars spot IDF vehicles approaching Burin and Adam sees Basem get home from school and has no way of warning him. Troops shackle him and traipse him through the house, but there's no sign of the American and Basem has to listen in dismay to the screams as the entire village is searched. Somehow, however, Adam had got into the hiding place and squirrelled Nathaniel away and he returns him to Basem after the Israelis have gone. He has his teacher's gun and demands that he helps him shoot the settler. But Basem convinces Adam that nothing can be gained from reprisal, as he has already done something remarkable for the cause.
Aware that neighbours know his house was the first to be searched, Basem has an uncomfortable walk to the fruit seller, who has no message for him. He has also upset Lisa, who had suggested meeting up over the weekend and he had lied about visiting his sister. But she comes to the house after he leaves a book on her desk and she witnesses Lieberman enter with an armed escort because he has discovered that Basem has the code name, `The Teacher'. She strips and wraps herself in a towel to make it look as if they had been sleeping together and embarrasses Liberman into leaving, although not before hearing that Basem is still married and had been jailed three times for resisting the occupier.
After they sleep together, Lisa finds a gun hidden on Basem's bookshelves and she threatens to leave because he has withheld so much from her. But he breaks down as he tells her how Yusuf had suffered a fatal asthma attack in a freezing punishment cell and she reaches out to him. Having peeked at the files in Liberman's office, Simon also seeks out Basem at the school. He hopes to speak as father to father and reassures Basem that the IDF are not his people. But he will only respond that Nathaniel will be kept alive until a trade is made because the Israelis consider his life has the equivalent worth of thousands of Palestinians.
Ignoring Basem's suggestion that he's not right for her, Lisa insists she's free to make her own choices and she helps tidy a room for Adam to move in because it's too crowded at his uncle's place. Basem treats him like a surrogate son in a cosy montage that concludes with Simon receiving news that his own boy is to be released. But the court acquits the settler who shot Yacoub for lack of evidence, even though Barsem and Adam testified as eyewitnesses.
So furious is the latter with the verdict that he breaks into the settler's house to stab him, only for him to pull a gun. As he backs away, Adam is astonished to see Barsem shoot the settler and demand they swap jumpers so that the man's wife will misidentify them. He waits to be arrested and, some time later, smiles at a photo taken on Adam's graduation day. But, as a car with no headlights pulls up outside the house under cover of darkness, it's clear that the radicalised and now-bearded Adam has decided to fight for freedom.
An entirely predictable ending caps off a well-intentioned film that succumbs to melodramatics too often to be as effective as its makers might hope. The story may be `Inspired by True Events', as IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was held by Palestinian militants demanding the release of 1000 comrades in 2011. But there's no genuine insight into the nature of the resistance, just a load of cloak and dagger clichés borrowed from old Cold War movies. More persuasive is the depiction of the everyday humiliations that the inhabitants of the West Bank have to endure, with the travelling sequences of Basem driving through increasingly militarised terrain being deftly handled.
Nabulsi deserves huge credit for filming on the West Bank, thus allowing cinematographer Gilles Porte to ensure an authentic evocation of place. She also draws solid performances out of Bakri, Poots, and El Rahman. Yet the montages Bakri shares with each are rather corny and typify the uncertain handling of tone that undermines the whole picture. The romance between Basem and Lisa is similarly driven more by plot than passion, while the Cohen subplot sits awkwardly as Stanley Townsend struggles with being the only non-stereotypical antagonist.
Despite the nuance in Alex Baranowski's melodic score, the action is often emotive, with the cutaway to Yusuf's asthma attack being particularly clumsy, as Basem describing events to Lisa would have drawn them closer after her threat to walk out. Even more implausible is the fact that a resistance group would use someone's profession for their top secret code name. Nevertheless, Nabulsi's righteous outrage comes through, as she honourably strives to examine a complex situation, while conveying the traumatic consequences of the Israeli occupation and the contempt and cruelty with which the Palestinians are treated.
ONE HAND CLAPPING.
Paul McCartney took the break-up of The Beatles harder than his erstwhile bandmates. Although he had made the solo album, McCartney (1970), as the legal wranglings became more exasperating, and had teamed with wife Linda on Ram (1971), he missed the collaborative side of music-making and formed Wings with Henry McCullough and Dennys Laine and Sewell.
In addition to releasing the albums Wild Life (1971) and Red Rose Speedway (1973), the combo had toured college campuses in order to reconnect with audiences. However, Seiwell and McCullough decided to bale before the trip to Lagos to record Band on the Run (1973) and the McCartneys and Laine made the landmark album together. Despite its critical and commercial success, McCartney recruited guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Geoff Britton before recording the single, `Junior's Farm' in Nashville.
Having showcased his own talents in the television special, James Paul McCartney (1973), Macca decided to make a featurette chronicling the new line-up recording a `live' album at Abbey Road Studios in August 1974. Conscious of the turn events had taken during the making of a similar project, Michael Lindsay-Hogg's Oscar-winning documentary, Let It Be (1970), he kept the schedule short and asked former Ritz magazine co-editor David Litchfield to call the shots.
Although the odd tension arose, McCartney retained in control over proceedings in a way that he had not at Twickenham Studios in January 1969. Yet, despite the sessions going well, both the film and album were shelved. Tracks cropped up on bootlegs and as reissue bonuses over the years, while the analogue video footage eventually found its way online. It was formally released as part of the Archive Collection edition of Band on the Run in 2010. But, with the album finally surfacing in June 2024, a 4K remaster of One Hand Clapping is getting a one-day cinema release on 26 September.
Playing a Rickenbacker 4001S bass, McCartney stands at a microphone, with Linda on keyboards behind him and Laine and McCulloch on guitars to his right, while Britton drums behind some perspex screens. The muscularity of his backbeat is evident throughout `Jet', which has a stripped down arrangement that reinforces the `live' feel.
Macca's beaming smile at the end of Linda's synth solo no doubt reflects his satisfaction at proving wrong those who had warned him about forming a band with his missus. Her backing vocals are equally important, as they are to `Junior's Farm', in which the thud of the bass and drums is complemented by McCulloch's driving guitar. This was only a minor hit and doesn't have much of a reputation. But it's a good old Macca rocker and he performs it with enthusiasm that is also evident in `Soily', which became a staple of live sets and found itself on the B side of the Wings Over America version of `Maybe I'm Amazed' in 1977.
A post mortem about the track sees Linda questioning the drums and a friendly debate ensues either side of an unseen second take. This band banter recalls the back-and-forths with John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison between the numbers in Let It Be, which had resulted in the latter walking out because he felt McCartney was being controlling and unappreciative. Britton's departure from Wings in March 1975 has been cited as one of the reasons for the parking of One Hand Clapping, as Joe English had replaced him.
Back in the studio, the infectious `C Moon' - which had been a double A-side with `Hi Hi Hi' in December 1972 - is given a jaunty run through. Linda cedes the keyboards to her husband to take up a tambourine and harmonise in a blurry foreground, as the song segues into `Little Woman Love', which had been the B side of `Mary Had a Little Lamb' in May 1972.
The editing here is a bit jerky, as if part of the song had been cut. But an interesting segment follows, in which a jammed version of the Black Lace hit, `Billy, Don't Be a Hero', plays over Laine and McCulloch discuss the role that their parents had played in encouraging them to become musicians. This leads into `Maybe I'm Amazed', with McCartney playing a novel introduction on an electric keyboard. In truth, it's not his best rendition of a beautiful song (he admits himself, `it's a bit messy'), but McCulloch's guitar solos and Laine and Linda's backing vocals are solid. The same is true in `My Love', which comes in halfway through following a digression to show Britton busting some moves in his karate suit and talking about the need to let off steam after a show.
The start of `Bluebird' is also missing, but we see McCartney talking through the saxophone solo with Howie Casey, who he had known from Derry and The Seniors in the Cavern days. In voiceover, Macca reflects on the music of his youth and namechecks Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra before going into the `cabaret' section that centres on `Suicide', which he had written with Ol' Blues Eyes in mind as a 14 year-old in 1956. He also composed `When I'm Sixty-Four' around this period, but he goes on to play `Let's Love' and `All of You', the former of which he had written for boyhood idol, Peggy Lee. With his fingers dancing over the piano keys, he concludes the medley with `I'll Give You a Ring', which he would dust down and expand for the B side of `Take It Away' in 1982.
Sipping tea, Linda explains how she learns her keyboard parts and recalls sagging off lessons to play piano in an upper room at her school. Laine interjects that he's seen the McCartney clan gather around a piano in Liverpool to belt out some old tunes. The sense that music is in the veins of all present lingers, as they pass briskly through `Band on the Run', with its three distinct sections that somehow flow together. There are also three parts to `Live and Let Die', which is accompanied in the studio by an orchestra conducted by Del Newman. In voiceover, McCartney admits that he has never learned to notate, so he relies heavily on producers and arrangers to get the sound he wants.
Ultimately, however, it's all down to him and he revels in the ingenuity of his Bond theme, which doesn't miss the pyrotechnics that have been de rigueur at gigs since 1976. Surprisingly, Wings never played `Nineteen Hundred And Eighty-Five' on stage and McCartney himself only revived in for the Up and Coming Tour in 2010. The intro reminds what a superb pianist McCartney is and he accompanies himself solo on a black grand with an upturned stool on the lid before a cut shows him improvising the ending to the Band on the Run backing track. Toking casually on a cigarette, he sings into a handheld microphone (not something you see very often) as he plays the strutting frontman.
Disarmingly, it's straight into Harry Akst and Benny Davis's Tin Pan Alley classic, `Baby Face'. He muffs the chords and starts again, as the credits roll with the song being accompanied by the Young Tuxedo Jazz Band in an overdub that was recorded in New Orleans during the Venus & Mars sessions n 1975. In voiceover, McCartney muses about childhood summers and the fear of feeling old at 25. He was 32 when he recorded this hugely enjoyable peek behind the curtain and he's still on the road half a century later - playing several of the songs. Even though the voice has known better days, his musicianship is still impeccable and one can only hope the show goes on for some time yet.
In fact, the versions of `Jet', `Junior's Farm', and `Soily' included here were re-filmed on 9 October, which just happened to be John Lennon's 34th birthday. The remainder come from the August session, which culminated the `Backyard' solo slot that is available here for the first time. Strumming an acoustic guitar, McCartney plays the Buddy Holly classics `Peggy Sue' and `I'm Gonna Love You Too', as well as Eddie Cochran's `Twenty Flight Rock', which was the song that impressed The Quarry Men at St Peter's Church in Woolton on 6 July 1957. Completing the al fresco set were the Beatle gems `Blackbird', the Wings flip side, `Country Dreamer', and the `Blackpool', which has gone unreleased until now.
As if perhaps surprised himself that he had once deemed this revealingly enjoyable exercise unreleasable, McCartney has added an introduction and included some Polaroids of the Abbey Road jamboree, which is all the more poignant because Linda, Denny, and Jimmy are no longer with us. Neither is recording engineer Geoff Emerick, who is frequently asked if things are okay in a jokey Scouse accent. It's a shame some of the album tracks didn't make it into the film, as the running time is only 67 minutes with the bonus material. No reference has been made to video footage of these numbers, but it seems likely that they were filmed, as that was the point of the entire enterprise. Perhaps they might emerge on disc, if and when One Hand Clapping is made available to buy. Completists will hope it is, in between fretting about the lost Fabs track, `Carnival of Light', and Macca projects like Return to Pepperland.
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