once upon a time - or maybe twice...
Click to viewHow many films about the Beatles does the world need?
The band split 40 years ago and Lennon himself died 20 years back and yet, what with Paul McCartney's touring theme-park of concerts, the never ending repackaging of material (Let it Be Naked, Love, One ad infinitum) and the steady flow of dramas and documentaries, it's as if they never went away.
They have become the great crucible for 20th century myths of almost any kind social, political and musical (insert personal list here).
Nowhere Boy, directed by artist Sam Taylor Wood, is made in comparatively good faith in that the film seeks if not to demystify at least to humanize its protagonist.
To this end, as with Backbeat, we are presented with a young Lennon and the emphasis is on his close family relationships, the tug of war between his Aunt Mimi and his estranged mother Julia.
The tensions between the three (and more especially between Lennon and his mum) are hammered home rather bluntly during the opening parts and the film feels as relieved as the audience to leave that behind since it sparks into energetic life once John discovers girls, Elvis and music in rapid succession.
Something to note; many of the reviews I’ve read are clearly based on watching simply the trailer. The film has a lot more music than simply one Lennon song over the credits or the Hard Days Night chords at the opening (aligning itself with Love and probably using that album's source for a sample).
Songs from the period are used well and there are also early Beatle songs such In spite of all the Danger and Hello Little Girl, performed in character by the actors - and quite well too.
The music comes as a fresh wind blowing the otherwise claustrophobic feeling the film contains as events move towards an inevitable confrontation between the three family members.
These scenes are the heart of the film and must have been emotionally demanding for the actors, all of whom give fantastic performances. Kristin Scott Thomas makes sure we see her humanity and genuine love for her adoptive son even at her most unreasonable and dictatorial; Ann-Marie Duff shows the damaged and fragile nature underneath Julia’s veneer of fun and flash whilst Aaron Johnson, at first something of a blank, gradually finds Lennon even as the films demonstrates the process of self-discovery and how we take from disparate sources the information we need to create our persona, which I found to be one of the best aspects of the film. The actor seems to change shape before the audiences’ eyes. For example, just as I was thinking ‘John never walked with his head up and his hands out’ the man gets his first leather jacket and POW! Hands in pockets and head down, exactly like Lennon. His vocal intonation and expression evolve likewise. All the more astonishing since the actor looks absolutely nothing like Lennon (even his eyes are the wrong colour), instead it’s as if we’re watching one of those old Anthony Balch films where faces were projected onto people, Lennon’s Self printed over the screen of the actor. And he’s intensely sympathetic; even when he’s being dense or boorish (as Lennon was wont to be at times) the actor keeps us aware of the ‘little child inside the man’ and the film plays along, being careful to keep his humanity and contradictions visible.
On the other hand Julia is presented as primarily sexual - which was, by all accounts, simply part of her attraction. The recollections recorded by the Beatles themselves stress her humour, (most infamously wearing knickers on her head) which was of a kind John seemed to inherit absolutely and her creativity (not simply musical) and warmth.
Performance of course is what the Beatles are all about. "That was for your mother wasn't it?" Julia remarks to McCartney after a sensitive rendering of one song. He remains studiedly neutral, giving nothing away and allowing Julia (the audience) to take from him whatever they hear.
I found that especially truthful.
Lennon was no less a performance artist, never satisfied without an audience - which should be remembered since the film contains scenes based on his journals and tapes which were in no way private or intended simply just for him*. The most notorious being his pondering the great ‘what-if’ - Lennon was doing something he’d done for years, fantasising and exaggerating and remembering with one eye closed**. There are several great interviews with George, (who clearly thought John talked bollocks, a view shared by many of that inner circle,) where he grits his teeth visibly; “Oh well John said that, that was John… what’s he said now?” etc.
Veracity was never an issue for Lennon who favoured emotional rather than literal honesty. Not for nothing did he title an album Double Fantasy.
Stuart Sutcliffe’s absence from the film is clearly a director’s choice - the film leaves John at the end to walk off into the sunset (sunrise?) as he heads for Hamburg and world domination. Next is the Beatles, the film suggests, allowing a happy ending of sorts. Actually of course what was next was being expelled from the country and the death of Stuart, including Stu would have meant treading on Backbeat’s turf but more importantly would probably have been one tragedy too many for the film to hold.
It’s a strange thing but now so much time HAS passed Lennon’s life does begin to appear tragic in retrospect. His Step-Dad, his mother, his best friend, his band and finally the man himself all died prematurely. The glory days of the Beatles seem now to be a brief blip.
And it’s tempting to read the psychology of Lennon here; the Beatles split with full acrimony and the bitterness from Lennon at McCartney’s gazumping the actual announcement is well known, but the why has perplexed many commentators including McCartney himself. I would suggest it was because Lennon desperately needed to be the one to walk away for the first time in his life (although he’d done this to Cynthia - and without thinking, in just the same manner as his own family had done in the past). McCartney could be insufferable but watching the Let it Be footage shows more than school teacher bossiness. He treats the others as recalcitrant children because that’s what they ARE. Lennon’s passive aggression forces Paul to become, of all things, Aunt Mimi - laying the groundwork for John’s exit all over again. It’s a profound fact that when Lennon didn’t get to restage his childhood in his own way (and leave Mimi/Paul for Yoko/Julia) he took another course and descended on his father Fred in full fury before cutting him off completely, squaring at least a part of the circle.
Listening to songs from his later career such as I Know (I know) it’s hardly surprising that they could be addressing Yoko or Julia or Stu or Paul or any and all of them.
But the film doesn’t want that kind of darkness and so there is a final musical catharsis and the open road. Lennon channelling his grief is the same pay-off that ends Birth of the Beatles (the film never uses the word Beatles, they are the Quarrymen throughout) and it’s no less cheesy here. A shame because the turn of events had made the audience gasp just moments before - indeed THAT gave me chills; I’ve never heard such a large multiple gasp in my life.
There is some definite and clunky manipulation of the audience’s emotions in the closing scenes, we see the real child Lennon in a framed photograph (somewhat bizarrely) and the fourth wall falls - similarly the use of Lennon’s own recording of Mother is almost too much.
It’s no mean feat to recreate an authentic 1950s Liverpool from its contemporary counterpart so the film is to be applauded in doing so successfully for the most part, (apart from one significant moment which looks as if it were filmed in Manchester and an anachronistic radio broadcast of Hancock’s Half Hour when I would have thought Life with the Lyons would be the obvious choice.) and without the usual over glossy, dripping in fixtures and fittings ‘heritage’ style of most British filmic equivalents (this isn’t Merchant Ivory and it’s not Wish you Were Here or Hope and Glory either) that trade so heavily on nostalgia.
Instead the film falls into something of a safe middle ground since it fails to explore the ‘real’ Liverpool very much, the different districts that meant so much (especially to a social aspirant like Mimi) from the Dingle to Hoylake. There’s not much ‘Scouse’ to the film, everyone is dreadfully British and middle class - but the language is therefore denuded. Language is revealing, and although there are some funny moments with the famous Lennon’s famous blunt speak, it’s sparse and generic. In reality the slang of the day is not there. Lennon himself was well aware of just how much his younger self was expressed through language - often unpleasantly; women as Judies and Spaniels, for example. As a consequence, one of the most famous rejoinders “Don’t blame me John Lennon - just coz your mother’s dead!” is also lacking - despite the film clearly showing that the girls could give as good as they got.
Still, the suburban setting is accurate and not often revealed in Beatle bios (though the interiors look a little large) and it’s important because the ‘working class hero’ myth was only created later - and was something Lennon always loathed (apart from that songs vitriol there is the interview in 1970 with Rolling Stone where John discusses the system and its creation of working class heroes as a sort of Orwellian construct to actually help the status quo rather than being anything genuinely revolutionary). I was reminded more than once of Anita and Me especially in the fete scenes.
The direction itself is neat and concise but oddly bland. Perhaps given her background and reputation Taylor Wood was conscious of being overly arty, instead settling for minimal camera work, preferring the actors over the action. I can see the sense in this approach but it leaves the film with a tea time TV quality.
To wrap up then, I give the film a cautious recommendation for the quality of acting alone plus a great deal of the film is fresh and funny. The music is fab and we get to see a bit of Quarrybank School. It would be nice if someone were to finally give us Lennon’s view of Liverpool, which would be have to be an animation since his recollections veered wildly between the hallucinatory nursery like states of Strawberry Fields and the grotesque cripples and paranoia of his doodles and art (the You are Here exhibition in 68 for example), but one day perhaps. Until then - or until Beatle saturation finally occurs, you could do a lot worse than make the most of a Nowhere Boy.
· *The film proclaims itself to be based on the memoir of Julia Baird - but that’s eye-wash since a great deal is culled from Lennon’s recently discovered audio tapes and at least one line of dialogue (the ‘Cunard-Yanks bit) is from The Compleat Beates, c/o Allan Williams.
· **not to mention being completely smacked out at the time (1978 or thereabouts).