Love We Make, The (2011)
*** 1/2 (out of 4)
Terrific documentary from Bradley Kaplan and Albert Maysles follows Paul McCartney as he prepares for The Concert for New York, the benefit for the victims of the 9/11 attacks. The film starts off a couple weeks before the main event as McCartney shares where he was when the attacks happened and then we follow him as he hits a variety of talk shows. The film closes with behind the scenes footage of the benefit concert where we get countless stars including The Who, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Billy Joel, Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow, Leonardo DiCaprio, Howard Stern, James Taylor and many more. THE LOVE WE MAKE works on a number of levels but I think its biggest fans are going to be McCartney nuts. This is a pretty interesting little documentary as we see him walking around New York, meeting the police and fireman but also just walking around talking to fans. In some of the films best moments we see McCartney walking down the street where one or two people notice him, start asking for autographs and before long more people start to show up. Even stranger is a sequence where McCartney feels that he's being followed by a couple people and it really does seem as if he's worried something bad's going to happen. We get a number of behind the scenes footage from various interviews he gave during this period including those to Access Hollywood, E! News and the Howard Stern show where we even get to see him meeting Ozzy Osbourne. The benefit concert is something I'm sure most people have already seen but we do get some musical performances by The Who, Bon Jovi, Clapton, Taylor, Joel & John and of course McCartney. The behind the scenes footage here is pretty priceless as we get to see the celebrities talking to one another back stage and we get a pretty funny bit with Bill Clinton talking about the 60's children. There's certainly a lot of mention of 9/11 but I think the real focus here is on McCartney, which some might object to but I think this is a very respectful document of the events after 9/11 and how this concert came to be.
