To Epstein, terrified of failure and of letting down his "boys" more than anything else, Beatlemania was both liberating and enslaving. At times, "The Brian Epstein Story" seems an act of tremendous decency. Epstein is presented to us without any of the protective barriers he had to employ in real life. One of the highest aims of documentary filmmaking is to allow people to present themselves as they are; "The Brian Epstein Story" achieves that. Everyone interviewed in the film appears fully themselves, nothing more and nothing less -- Epstein's elderly Aunt Stella, whose manner and house speak poignantly of the well-bred existence Epstein left in Liverpool; Lonnie Trimble, Epstein's American cook and manservant, whose devotion, after all these years, can break your heart; Joanne Petersen, Epstein's assistant, who discovered his body; Gerry Marsden, of Gerry and the Pacemakers, who has never lived anywhere other than Liverpool's Merseyside and who has had to live out the meaning of "Ferry Cross the Mersey," the song he sang when it looked like his future would take him so much further; and, most of all, Paul McCartney, who has simply never appeared as warm or articulate or generous as he appears here.

The film is brilliantly made. The first half contains crisp readings from Epstein's unpublished diaries by Jude Law (who is in the midst of setting up his own film on Epstein, and whose readings make a better case for him as an actor than any of his performances). The film has been scripted by Jon Savage, one of the finest writers on pop music. (His "England's Dreaming" remains the great account of the heroic saga of British punk rock.) And the editing, by Roy Deverell and Guy Crossman, encompassing some eerie, slowed down images of Epstein on a bank of TV monitors, manages the tricky task of making the film pleasing aesthetically without ever getting in the way of its human content.

"The Brian Epstein Story" is a rarity not just for its excellence and the way the filmmakers have set about to explicate -- rather than explain -- the mystery of its subject. It's a rarity because very few documentaries or biographies can take as their subject someone who absolutely and irrevocably changed the world. As the man who brought the Beatles out of Liverpool, Brian Epstein did that. The distance of the journey they undertook may explain something of the inevitable sadness of such an incredible triumph. In a recent conversation, producer Debbie Geller observed, "Maybe it's common to all pop stories, but there is something sad about having to reinvent yourself or at least to put on a persona that's different to your real self. At that time, in that country, neither [Epstein nor the Beatles] could stay as they were." The grace of "The Brian Epstein Story" is that it allows the masks to drop and assumes the audience's love for its subject will still be there. Or will be, if American audiences ever get a chance to see it.

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