GEORGE HARRISON 

From the relatively tender age of 20 until the day he died from lung cancer in 2001 at age 58, the world’s eyes were locked on George Harrison. At the same time, he was looking at the world—from the early days of Beatlemania, through his worldwide journeys in search of spiritual enlightenment and musical enjoyment, Harrison was rarely without a camera in hand. His personal trove of photos and home movies was thrown open to Martin Scorsese, and that unprecedented access shapes the director’s resulting three-and-a-half-hour documentary. If Harrison himself often seems oddly absent from Living in the Material World, it is because we’re seeing the world from his perspective—whether it’s crowds of Beatles fans filling the street or the beaming face of his mentor Ravi Shankar.

Other perspectives are offered by talking-head interviews with Harrison’s friends and family, but the choice to follow the footage where it takes him still leaves Scorsese with enormous gaps in the story. His subject’s pre-Beatles years are barely mentioned, even by Harrison’s relatives, and one of the most remarkable chapters of his professional life, his 1987 comeback with the No. 1 hit “Got My Mind Set on You” and its accompanying album, Cloud Nine, is skipped in the rush to the following year’s star-studded Traveling Wilburys project—which inspired Harrison, thankfully, to pick up his video camera again. Bonus features are limited to a handful of brief excised sequences and a Harrison-assisted performance of Shankar’s “Dispute and Violence.” –Chris Neal