Based on the bestselling book by Lars Saabye Christensen, Beatles, by Swedish director Peter Flinth, is the kind of film that, as soon as you start watching, you feel you’ve seen it many times before. It tells the story of four teens growing up in Oslo in the 1960s who are, of course, spellbound by the Beatles. So much so that they are crazy about starting a band that will give them an identity as well as a tribute to the English musicians — or something like that, it’s never quite clear.
One of them, Kim, bears a slight resemblance to Paul McCartney and is also struggling to find his own voice — and I don’t mean in musical terms, but rather in existential ones.
Paradoxically enough, the search for an identity that both the kids’ band and Kim long for is also what the film doesn’t have. That is to say, a personality. Beatles is a generic movie from beginning to end, and it relies on a screenplay that never breaks new ground — actually it doesn’t even try to do so. Worst of all, director Flinth can’t get the formula right either — and it’s not a hard formula to pull off.
So what you get is a gallery of underwritten characters involved in just another coming of age story. To be fair, Kim is the only one who is sketched to a certain degree whereas the others simply have no distinguishing traits of any kind. They are just there, executing trite actions provided in the screenplay. And whereas the actors are charismatic, there’s only so much they can do.
Of course, there’s a love story between Kim and a pretty girl, a carnal affair between another one of the kids and a much older woman, occasional vignettes depicting the everyday episodes youngsters go through at home and at school, and some confrontations here and there.
On second thought, the well-executed musical score and the somewhat atmospheric cinematography maybe the only alluring elements.
Now, why films that are so predictable from the very moment the screenplay is written are then made still eludes me. In this particular case, there could only be one good reason to make it: to render a film version of an extremely popular book. So you could say that as it happens with many literary adaptations, the result is nothing to write home about.
Production notes
Beatles (Norway, 2014). Directed by Peter Flinth. Written by Axel Hellstenius, based on the novel by Lars Saabie Christensen. With Louis Williams, Håvard Jackwitz, Ole Nicolai Mylold Jorgensen, Havor Tangen Schultz. Cinematography: Philippe Kress. Editing: Vidar Flataukan. Music: Magne Furuholmen. Running time: 107 minutes.
