[REVIEW] Nowhere Boy
Dec. 8th, 2010 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonald The 30th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon is being marked in his adopted New York City and around the world. I wasn't even 11 months old when he was assassinated, but I've certainly heard and learned plenty about him in his pop star era: the "Imagine" controversy, the dynamics of the Beatles, his complicated personal relationships. (His potential as a political and cultural figure, cliched as it might sound, was only just beginning.)
The genius of Nowhere Boy, a 2009 film directed by Sam Taylor-Wood--a multi-faceted artist; she covered "I'm In Love with a German Film Star" with the Pet Shop Boys--is that it strips all that away to make a simple film about a teenage boy in early 1960s Liverpool, troubled and complex and trying to find his way in his music, his city, and his family. The genius of the film is that it isn't a "pre-Beatles" film; it's much more tightly focused than that, never mentioning the band's name while showing how he developed to the point. The script's both compelling and true to live; my mom, from the Beatles generation, thought the film quite good, though it rearranged the chronology somewhat to come up with a more compact narrative. Aaron Johnson channels Lennon; Kristin Scott Thomas, as his aunt Mimi, is as good as we have a right to expect; Lennon's mother is played well by Anne-Marie Duff. Seeing Nowhere Boy is as good a way as any to honour Lennon; go, see.
The genius of Nowhere Boy, a 2009 film directed by Sam Taylor-Wood--a multi-faceted artist; she covered "I'm In Love with a German Film Star" with the Pet Shop Boys--is that it strips all that away to make a simple film about a teenage boy in early 1960s Liverpool, troubled and complex and trying to find his way in his music, his city, and his family. The genius of the film is that it isn't a "pre-Beatles" film; it's much more tightly focused than that, never mentioning the band's name while showing how he developed to the point. The script's both compelling and true to live; my mom, from the Beatles generation, thought the film quite good, though it rearranged the chronology somewhat to come up with a more compact narrative. Aaron Johnson channels Lennon; Kristin Scott Thomas, as his aunt Mimi, is as good as we have a right to expect; Lennon's mother is played well by Anne-Marie Duff. Seeing Nowhere Boy is as good a way as any to honour Lennon; go, see.
