Jackson has called his series “a documentary about a documentary,” and we are constantly reminded that we are watching the band produce its image for the camera. It’s as if she is staging a marathon performance piece, and in a way, she is. The documentary’s shaggy run time reveals Ono’s provocation in all its intensity. A “mundane” task becomes peculiar when you choose to perform it in front of McCartney’s face as he tries to write “Let It Be.” When you repeat this for 21 days, it becomes astonishing. Her gauzy black outfit and flowing, center-parted hair lend her a tentlike appearance it is as if she is setting up camp, carving out space in the band’s environment. To deny this is to sap her of her power.įrom the beginning, Ono’s presence feels intentional. The fact that she is not there to directly influence the band’s recordings only makes her behavior more ridiculous. Of course her appearance in the studio is obtrusive. Indeed, she is not the set’s most meddlesome interloper: That is Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the hapless director of the original documentary “Let It Be,” who keeps urging the band to stage a concert in an ancient amphitheater in Libya or perhaps at a hospital for children suffering from reassuringly minor ailments.Īnd yet there is something depressing about the recasting of Ono as a quiet, inconspicuous lump of a person. Her presence has been described as gentle, quiet and unimposing. In the series, McCartney himself - from the vantage of January 1969, more than a year before the band’s public dissolution - pokes fun at the idea that the Beatles would end “because Yoko sat on an amp.” Ono, also a producer on the series, tweeted an article without comment that claims she is merely performing “mundane tasks” as the band gets to work. “She never has opinions about the stuff they’re doing,” Jackson, who crafted the series out of more than 60 hours of footage, told “60 Minutes.” “She’s a very benign presence, and she doesn’t interfere in the slightest.” “The Beatles: Get Back” is being read by some as an exculpatory document - proof that Ono was not responsible for destroying the Beatles. I was seeing intimate, long-lost footage of the world’s most famous band preparing for its final performance, and I couldn’t stop watching Yoko Ono sitting around, doing nothing. My attention kept drifting toward her corner of the frame.