The Beatles and India (2021) on Netflix

NR20211h 32mDocumentary Music

The Beatles' engagement with Indian music and philosophy runs from George Harrison's first sitar to the 1968 retreat in Rishikesh. In India, their music and style reach a young generation.

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Netflix3.3/5
IMDb6.5/10606 votes
Rotten TomatoesNot available

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Plot summary

George Harrison first meets a sitar while the Beatles are filming Help! and plays it on Norwegian Wood later in 1965. From there the band's contact with India widens: a stopover in Delhi in July 1966, a friendship with Ravi Shankar that leads to Harrison's Wonderwall Music sessions in Bombay, and an embrace of Transcendental Meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. A 1968 retreat in Rishikesh becomes the setting for most of the White Album songs, recalled by fellow students and Indian pop musicians of the time. The band's pull on Indian youth shows in the pop group the Savages and in Shammi Kapoor's Beatles wig in the 1965 film Janwar. Reports from 1968 claim the ashram in Rishikesh served as a CIA camp.

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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Beatles and India (2021)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

The film reveals that in 1968 Indian communist and socialist politicians claimed the Maharishi's ashram in Rishikesh was a camp run by the CIA, and that the KGB sent its agent Yuri Bezmenov to investigate it. Late-1980s footage shows Bezmenov claiming TM students such as actress Mia Farrow unwittingly helped destabilise American society.
Director Ajoy Bose described the film as the "brainchild" of producer Reynold D'Silva, who had first considered making such a documentary over 30 years earlier, while his music company was working with George Harrison's HandMade Films.
The Beatles' early influence on Indian pop culture is shown through the contemporaneous pop group the Savages and actor Shammi Kapoor dancing in a Beatles wig in the 1965 film Janwar.