Backbeat movie review & film summary (1994)
There is a lot more to the story than that, of course, and "Backbeat" makes the most of it. Sutcliffe's best friend in the band was John Lennon, and the film suggests, subtly, that Lennon was in love with him, and maybe with Astrid, too. The other Beatles (George, Paul, and Pete Best, who was then the drummer instead of Ringo Starr) weren't so thrilled with Sutcliffe. They believed he was a bad musician, and Sutcliffe agreed with them. A bigger problem was that he simply didn't much care about being in a rock and roll band, and stayed as long as he did only because of Lennon's insistence.
The story of the early days of the Beatles is the stuff of folklore; how they discovered their sound in the smoky dives of Hamburg, how the producer George Martin masterminded their early great records, how they become the most famous performers in the world, almost overnight. It is a good story, but it isn't the one "Backbeat" wants to tell. It wants to make Stuart Sutcliffe the focus of the film, and it's never able to convince us there's a story there.
Sutcliffe (Stephen Dorff) somewhat resembled James Dean, and it was probably Astrid's haircut for her boyfriend - modeled on her own - that influenced the original moptop look. The other Beatles wanted to look more like Elvis. When Astrid replaced the ducktails with the Beatles cut, she created an image that was to become instantly marketable; if the Beatles had only had The Look and the early records, they still would have been big stars. That they had extraordinary talent made them enduring.
It would appear, on the basis of this film, that Sutcliffe would not have the musical talent to keep up with the others. Nor did he have the joy of performance that is so obvious in early films like "A Hard Day's Night." He was more introspective, and what suited him was to paint large abstract canvasses in Astrid's apartment, and discuss painting and photography with her.
Many of his paintings can be seen in the film. They are not especially interesting, although perhaps he might have developed if he had not died so young. Albert Goldman's book about Lennon contends that Lennon kicked Sutcliffe in the head during a drunken fight, and was guilt-ridden for years with the thought that the kick might have led to the hemorrhage some two years later. In the movie, the kick to the head comes in a pub brawl. Whatever caused his death, Sutcliffe died too young to be of enough interest for a biopic - except, of course, that he just missed becoming famous as a Beatle.
