Nowhere Boy (2009) Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson Rating: 6.0
The film follows a teenage John Lennon discovering music, girls, Paul and
George and unraveling his complicated emotional relationship with his mother
Julia and his Aunt Mimi. Most of the film is fairly accurate though it takes
some liberties with the timeline and squeezes events that actually took place
over a few years into a one year period to enhance the drama. It ends with
Lennon and his mates heading for Hamburg.
Lennon was born in 1940. His father Alfred was a seaman and often away on
long trips leaving him to his mother to take care of. When Alfred came back
from one trip he discovered that Julia was pregnant from another man and
left her and kidnapped John intending to take him to New Zealand. Julia caught
up with him and the parents asked the five year boy who he wanted to be with.
He chose his father but when his mother left he ran after her. At this point
his Aunt Mimi stepped in and took the child and raised him for the next 13
years. John's relationship with his father vanished not to be reconnected
till he was famous while his mother stayed close by and he visited her from
time to time. In fact, she introduced him to rock and roll and bought him
his first guitar in 1956 (the film gives that honor to Mimi). In 1958 Julia
was walking home after visiting her sister and killed by a car. John was
tormented by his off and on relationship with his mother and her early death
all of his life looking for absolution through primal scream therapy, drugs
and depression.
On the White album Lennon wrote a loving tribute to his mother in the song
Julia, but in his cathartic album Plastic Ono Band his song Mother is a painful
scream of resentment.
Mother, you had me but I never had you
I wanted you, you didn't want me
So I, I just gotta tell you
Goodbye, goodbye
Mimi was to pass away in 1991 eleven years after Lennon was killed and long
after she realized her advice to John was quite wrong - "The guitar's all
right John, but you'll never make a living out of it". Lennon called her
every week for all of his life. Backbeat (1994) Director: Iain Softly Rating: 6.5
In August of 1960, the agent of the Beatles arranged for them to go off to
Hamburg after both Rory and the Hurricanes and Gerry and the Pacemakers had
said they could not. The Beatles were still a rough rock and roll band and
had to add Pete Best at the last minute as the drummer for them to go. So
at this point The Beatles were Lennon, McCartney, a 17 year old George, Best
and on bass Stuart Sutcliffe. They were each being paid 2.50 pounds a day
with free lodging in one dark squalid room to work seven days and many hours.
Hamburg at this time was still recovering from WW II and had a reputation
as a very disreputable sleazy city filled with crime, drugs, prostitutes
and a large Red District area. The Beatles started at the Kaiserkeller where
they perfomed in between strip tease acts. They would come out and rip off
some standard rock and roll songs and then go back and wait for another lady
to finish taking off her clothes to reappear. Over the nearly two years they
played in Hamburg - with trips back to the UK to play the Cavern Club and
at Best's mother's club the Casbah Coffee Club - they honed their band into
one of the best around. They also started writing some of their own material
to play such as I Saw Her Standing There. They were invited in Hamburg to
be the backing group for a recording that Tony Sheridan did of My Bonnie.
Oddly, later this recording sold well enough in Brian Epstein's record shop
that he went down to the Cavern Club to check them out.
This film covers those two years with a particular focus on the friendship
between Sutcliffe (Stephen Dorff) and Lennon (Ian Hart who has also portrayed
Lennon in Hours and Times) - and the romance that developed between Sutcliff
and Astrid Kirchher (who took some classic photos of the group and also is
credited with giving them the famous Beatles moptop). One evening Klaus Voorman
had been walking by the club and heard the music and walked in and was blown
away. He invited his girlfriend Astrid to join him. Voorman later on designed
the cover for Revolver and was bass player for Manfred Mann for a few years
- and played bass on Lennon's Imagine album. But he lost out on Astrid.
This is a legendary period in the Beatles lives when they went from ragged
bar band to being on the verge of fame - they also met Ringo - and replaced
Best with him later in 1962 just as they are about to do their first recording.
It is a solid film intermingling the tragic Sutcliffe, the always angry Lennon
and the Zen like Astrid into a piece of rock and roll history. The Hours and Times (1991) Director: Christopher and Munch Rating: 5.5
This is a small intimate black and white film that fictionalizes a vacation
that John Lennon and Brian Epstein took to Barcelona in 1963. Epstein had
of course discovered the Beatles in the Cavern Club in Liverpool back in
1961 and changed their image and charted a path to their fame. Epstein was
also gay, which was still illegal in the UK back in that time. He apparently
had a strong affection for Lennon which generated rumors for years that the
two of them had an affair. Lennon later had this to say "I was on holiday
with Brian Epstein in Spain, where the rumours went around that he and I
were having a love affair. Well, it was almost a love affair, but not quite.
It was never consummated. But it was a pretty intense relationship."
The film is a series of conversations, doubts, conflicts, affection that
occur during these few days. Epstein (David Angus) is portrayed as a refined
but troubled soul with elements of self-hate and a strong desire for Lennon.
And indeed Epstein was a troubled soul in real life looking but never finding
love or happiness, turning to drugs and dying from an overdose four years
later at the age of 32. Lennon is portrayed as acidic, sarcastic, verbally
sadistic and a bit of a prick (which seems pretty close to the truth) - so
much so that at least in this film it is hard to understand why Epstein is
so drawn to him. The magnetism that shines when we see Lennon in clips of
him in the real world are buried beneath a surly moody performance. Still
it is an interesting imagining of what took place on that holiday. Lennon Naked (2010) Director: Edmund Coulthard Rating: 5.0
I have loved the music of John Lennon for a big chunk of my life and for
a long time that transferred to the man especially when he became involved
in the anti-war movement - but when I began to read about him as a human
being it is difficult not to come to the conclusion that he was basically
a real shit - to the other Beatles, to fans, to the press, to his wives,
to Julian his son and eventually most of his old friends. Whether this inner
anger and bitterness stemmed from his childhood desertion by his mother and
father or other demons I don't know, but he was a self-absorbed dick. But
I still love his music because out of this pain came this incredible music
- at least for a decade. Crap after Imagine once he started coming to terms
with himself and his creepy love for Mother, as he called Yoko.
Lennon Naked basically goes with the theory that it was how he was abandoned
as a child that made him who he is - but his self pity becomes more pathetic
than tragic in this telling of seven years of his life between 1964 - 1971.
The film is a series of episodes in his life - beginning in 1964 when Brian
Epstein takes him to see his father for the first time in 17 years and John
has not forgiven him - though other sources and the film Nowhere Boy posits
that his father actually tried to take Lennon with him to New Zealand when
John was five but Julia, his mother would not let him. The film quickly jumps
through the next few years - Epstein's death, Magical Mystery Tour to dwell
at length on the return of his father and his meeting up with Yoko Ono, who
took him from angry to total self-absorption and him turning his back on
The Beatles. It is a slow anxious crawl into Yoko obsession and the darkness.
The film ends with the breakup of the Beatles and his leaving to live in
NYC in 1971 never to return. And thus deserting his son Julian just as he
had been deserted years before. Two of Us (2000) Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg: Rating: 7.0
In April 1976 Paul McCartney and his band Wings were touring America on the
heels of their release of Wings at the Speed of Sound and the number one
hit Silly Love Songs. McCartney was in NYC on April 24th house hunting and
on the spur of the moment decided to go visit John Lennon at the Dakota.
This very nostalgic charming but ultimately sad film fictionalizes that day
and for any Beatle fan it is a pleasure to watch the day unwind even if the
events and conversations are imagined.
Lennon was coming off his nearly two year bender that he referred to as the
Lost Weekend in which he had left Yoko and gone to California to take up
with another woman and his drinking pal Harry Nilsson. In 1975 he came home
to Yoko, they had Sean and Lennon embarked on a five year hiatus from music
to become a house husband. It wasn't until 1980 that John returned to music
and produced Double Fantasy in October. Two months later he was killed outside
the Dakota.
In the film the two friends and often adversaries spend the day together
wading through their anger, disappointments, bitterness, musical differences
with one another but also their discovery of how close they still are. At
the end of the night they are watching Saturday Night Live when Lorne Michaels
comes on and makes an offer to have the Beatles come on the show for $3,000
(they were being offered millions at the time to reunite). The two jump at
the idea of going down there right now and accepting half the price since
there are only two of them, but they never make it. This is actually a true
anecdote. If only. A well-written script and solid action from Aidan Quinn
as Paul and Jared Harris as John.
