The Bea­t­les make one last record in the Get Back doc­u­men­tary trailer

The year is 1969: despite hav­ing with­drawn from pub­lic per­for­mance for three years, the Bea­t­les are still the most famous band in the world, but ten­sions with­in the group have begun to dri­ve them apart. They con­vene at Twick­en­ham and Apple stu­dios for one last album before call­ing it quits, a doc­u­men­tary crew allowed in the room to chron­i­cle the fraught cre­ative process by which anoth­er of their many clas­sic records came together.

That footage has gone unseen until now, with the first trail­er for The Bea­t­les: Get Back hav­ing just appeared online. Peter Jack­son has done the noble ser­vice of col­lect­ing, beau­ti­fy­ing, and edit­ing this trea­sure trove of inti­mate scenes with the leg­ends from Liv­er­pool, a por­trait of sin­cere friend­ship win­ning out over ego and discord.

The trail­er runs through the famed series of obsta­cles that called the album’s com­ple­tion into ques­tion: George Har­ri­son​‘s depar­ture and even­tu­al return, the can­ce­la­tion of their planned come­back con­certs, the mount­ing influ­ence of John Lennon​‘s girl­friend Yoko Ono on his self-image. Argu­ments threat­ened to end the album that would become Let It Be before it could even start, but these were the sort of bit­ter dis­putes a per­son only has with their clos­est friends.

The emo­tion­al back­bone of the film is the gen­uine close­ness between John, Paul, George, and Ringo, four men who’d gone through a lot togeth­er and could real­ly only relate to one anoth­er. Once they’d got­ten some songs in the can, the ani­mos­i­ty melt­ed away and they remem­bered why they’d spent the past ten years togeth­er; their reluc­tance to allow this jour­ney to end cul­mi­nat­ed in the last gasp of the rooftop con­cert at Apple Corps.

Jackson’s recent inter­est in restor­ing vin­tage film­strips has nev­er been put to bet­ter use, reviv­ing recent his­to­ry for those who recall The Bea­t­les’ hey­day and the new gen­er­a­tions of music-lovers in thrall of their cat­a­logue. We could very well be look­ing at anoth­er resur­gent wave of Beat­le­ma­nia in the near future.

The Bea­t­les: Get Back comes to Dis­ney Plus over three days, begin­ning 25 November.