The Beatles' Swan Song

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Forty–five years ago today, the Beatles released "Let It Be," the last album they would release as the Fab Four. It was also the soundtrack for the movie of the same name.

It was released on this date in the United Kingdom. The album was released in the United States 10 days later — after the movie hit the theaters.

In the years ahead, there would be compilation albums released exploring various themes. There would be a concert album that combined tracks from concerts in the Hollywood Bowl recorded about a year apart. There would even be a couple of singles that were made by combining recordings of the long–deceased John Lennon and the then–three surviving Beatles.

But there would be no more new, original albums.

Anyway, "Across the Universe" is my favorite song on the album. I have long said it is my favorite Beatles song of all, and it probably is although there are several songs that are worthy of that designation.

As it has been with many Beatles songs, there are plenty of cover versions of "Across the Universe" out there — and, as I have admitted many times before, as a rule I'm not a fan of Beatles cover songs — but I think my favorite is the one Fiona Apple did for the movie "Pleasantville."

Her voice always seemed right for that song — well, to me it did.

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The title track is certainly a fan favorite. It was ranked the 20th greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone, and I am certain that it is one of the most recognizable Beatles tunes ever recorded. Probably more recognizable than "Hey Jude" or "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" — or even "I Wanna Hold Your Hand."

I've heard — more than once — that Paul McCartney wanted to write the Beatles' equivalent of "Bridge Over Troubled Water," arguably Simon and Garfunkel's signature song, so he wrote "Let It Be." That would be plenty for most people — to have inspired a Beatles song — and I like both songs, but I think Simon and Garfunkel's song was better.

(Even though Paul Simon, who wrote most of the song, loathed the part that Art Garfunkel wrote — "Sail on, silver girl ..." — and reportedly came to believe that he, not Garfunkel, should have sung it on the record.)

I would certainly list "Let It Be" as one of the favorites from the album. It was the title track, after all.

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Another favorite is "Get Back," which was performed in the famous rooftop concert on the roof of Apple's (that's the recording company, not the computer company) headquarters in London in January 1969 — the last public appearance of the Beatles.

If you get the chance to see the movie, you can see portions of the 42–minute concert that drew a crowd of curious onlookers, including British police who broke up the show.

If you listen to the album, you'll hear several songs that aren't generally well known to non–Beatles fans — like "One After 909," "Two Of Us," "I Me Mine" and lots more.

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But nothing can compare to the feeling I get when I see the Beatles performing "I've Got a Feeling" for an audience.

Wish I could have been there.

Life Wasn't Always Pleasant in Pleasantville

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David (Tobey Maguire): They're happy like this.

Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon): No, David. Nobody's happy in a poodle skirt and a sweater set.

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When "Pleasantville" premiered on this day in 1998, film critic Roger Ebert wrote that it was "one of the year's best and most original films," but he acknowledged that it "sneaks up on us."

"It begins by kidding those old black–and–white sitcoms like 'Father Knows Best,' " Ebert wrote, "it continues by pretending to be a sitcom itself, and it ends as a social commentary of surprising power."

As Ebert observes, the director, Gary Ross, wrote "Big," in which Tom Hanks played a boy who was trapped in an adult's body.

"Here the characters are trapped in a whole world," Ebert wrote.

I thought it was a clever premise, and it was carried off flawlessly.

At the beginning of the movie, the world was (presumably) the modern one (albeit 15 years ago). A brother and sister (played by Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) broke the remote control while fighting over what to watch on TV, and a mysterious repairman (Don Knotts) showed up with a strange substitute remote control that he gave to Maguire.

After the repairman left, the fight resumed, but the remote transported the two of them to the world of the 1950s, in which everything was black and white.

In their new world, Maguire and Witherspoon had different names and different parents (Joan Allen and William H. Macy). They were in the world of the Parkers, the subjects of a TV series in a marathon Maguire's character originally planned to watch. Now, they had to assume the identities of the children in the series.

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In the idyllic 1950s world, everything was wholesome — excessively so. For example, in Pleasantville an entire brigade of firemen retrieved a single kitten from a tree. Life was always pleasant in Pleasantville. The temperature was even a constant 72°, and there was never any rain.

Maguire and Witherspoon agreed that it was best not to rock the boat, and that was fine with Maguire's more introverted character, but Witherspoon was too hip for the Leave It To Beaver scene. She had sex (a previously unknown notion in Pleasantville's world, where spouses slept in twin beds) with her boyfriend, and gradually color began to seep into the black–and–white world, sparking all kinds of changes.

Some of those changes were good, like the interest in painting that the change encouraged in malt shop attendant Jeff Daniels. And some weren't so good, like the rift that was created between Allen and Macy.

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Then the movie morphed into the social commentary that Ebert mentioned.

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"People, people ... I think we all know what's going on here. Up until now everything around here has been, well, pleasant. Recently certain things have become unpleasant. It seems to me that the first thing we have to do is to separate out the things that are pleasant from the things that are unpleasant."

Big Bob (J.T. Walsh)

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The town was divided between the traditional black–and–white folks and the radical "colored" folks, which led to a surprising and uplifting conclusion. In his final role, J.T. Walsh, as the town's mayor, and other civic leaders imposed rules that were intended to squelch this spread of color.

For example ... "The only permissible paint colors shall be BLACK, WHITE or GRAY, despite the recent availability of certain alternatives."

It failed, as most attempts to muzzle creativity do, leading to a trial in which Walsh's character, angered by the changes in his town, burst into color himself.

I can think of no better summary for "Pleasantville" than the one offered by Ebert 15 years ago.

" 'Pleasantville' is the kind of parable that encourages us to re–evaluate the good old days and take a fresh look at the new world we so easily dismiss as decadent," he wrote. "Yes, we have more problems. But also more solutions, more opportunities and more freedom."