If you’d like to celebrate John Lennon’s birthday, which falls on Saturday, October 9th, do yourself a favor and go see a remarkable new English film about his teenage years, Nowhere Boy, to be released this Friday to coincide with worldwide celebrations of the 70th anniversary of Lennon’s birth.
Nowhere Boy, directed by the immensely talented Sam Taylor-Wood (a woman) in her debut film, is one of those rare biographical films, like Walk the Line, about Johnny Cash, that transcends the biopic genre. It is poignant, compelling, beautifully acted, and delivers a story that deepens our understanding of this complex, driven and sometimes explosive musical superstar who poured so much of his passion into his work.
To be honest, I am the kind of Beatles fan who loves the music and knows next to nothing about Lennon and his childhood. I assumed, like many fans do, that Lennon grew up in poverty in the slums of grimy, ugly, post-World War II Liverpool. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The script, by Julia Baird and Matt Greenhalgh, whose authenticity is endorsed by those who knew Lennon best, depicts Lennon as a middle-class kid growing up in a comfortable (though emotionally confusing) home in a leafy suburb of small, tidy houses in 1950s England. There is not a trace of the dank, dark, impoverished Liverpool I had imagined. Like kids everywhere, Lennon is connected to the outside world via radio and movies. He bikes to school, in shirt and tie, smokes incessantly (as does everyone in the film) and appears, at first, to have a normal, conventional life. But he is haunted by a series of inexplicable events in his childhood, whose unraveling is at the heart of the story.
Without giving away the plot, suffice it to say that Lennon is torn between two mother figures who are sisters – the prim Mimi (Kristin Scott-Thomas), who has raised John since the age of five, and his birth mother, the wanton and perhaps manic-depressive Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), who gave him up to Julia, for reasons that remain unclear until the climactic end of the film. The sisters live within walking distance of each other and Lennon ricochets between the two homes.
Mimi provides Lennon with a stable but fairly stern home; Julia, warm and exuberantly sexual, gives him a love of Elvis, rock ‘n roll, and teaches him to play the banjo. John yearns to find out where his father is and why his mother abandoned him. Unsuited to an academic education, but a gifted artist and singer, Lennon, restless and rebellious, inspired by Elvis and the skiffle craze of mid-fifties England, decides to form a band, The Quarrymen, named after his Quarry Bank high school. The band does surprising well and rapidly evolves from playing on the back of a truck to larger venues. After Paul McCartney and George Harrison join the group, we know that that the band will rename itself The Beatles in 1960, and soar to unimaginable heights. But that lies in the future. In the film, it is Lennon’s 17th birthday that provokes a showdown between Mimi and Julia, one which provides the answers he has long sought as well as a family tragedy that will forever fuel his music and explosive personality.
Playing the teenage John is a handsome young actor, Aaron Johnson, who is extraordinary in this role. His gradual transformation from ordinary class cut-up, thrown out of school for various misbehaviors (“There’s nowhere for the geniuses,” he mumbles under his breath to the headmaster), to Elvis impersonator, to banjo and guitar player, to band leader, to seriously rebellious, emotionally volatile teenager is totally believable and absolutely gripping. Johnson, who resembles Lennon, inhabits this role as fully as Joachim Phoenix did Johnny Cash. It’s a star-making performance.
The soundtrack of early rock ‘n roll is excellent, and the ensemble of actors playing funny, acid-tongued, tough-and-tender teenagers, is terrific. By the end of the film, as John is about to leave for Hamburg, we really do, in the words of one of Lennon’s last songs, “understand the little child inside the man.”
Following a preview screening of Nowhere Boy at the Paley Center for Media, on West 52nd Street, members of John’s first band, The Quarrymen, reminisced about postwar Liverpool (“We were lucky to get an orange a week.”), and performed a few numbers. Queried by a well-known authority on Lennon, Martin Lewis, who calls himself a “Johnaholic,” the Quarrymen agreed that Nowhere Boy captured the essence of the times and offered a plausible interpretation of Lennon’s early life. The white-haired musicians, who reunited in 1997, looked trim and hip in black shirts and jackets, and were in good voice as they played “Maggy May”, a featured song in the film, and other oldies. They will be performing at a birthday party concert for John on Saturday at Ethical Culture on Central Park West.
For New York fans of The Beatles who want even more, The Paley Center is celebrating the life and work of Lennon from October to December. It will be screening essential documentaries about Lennon, including Imagine, Gimme Some Truth and a complete version of What’s Happening.
Now on view in the Center’s Lobby and First Floor Gallery is a comprehensive exhibit of photographs from Lennon’s youth and teenage years, including rare images of Paul McCartney and George Harrison joining the Quarrymen. Accompanying the photos is a video of Lennon speaking about these formative years.
Nowhere Boy
To Be Released October 8th by The Weinstein Company
For a complete listing of events and screenings, go to www.paleycenter.org.
Photo of The Quarrymen, Michael Priest
Bottom photo:
October 18, 1957
Friday night at the New Clubmoor Hall in Norris Green, Liverpool, the Quarrymen performed for the first time with their new member Paul McCartney. Immediately perceived by John to be a fellow frontman, he and Paul got decked out in white jackets while the rest of the group wore white shirts with bootlace ties. The tension got to Paul—then playing guitar—who bungled his first-ever solo. “I was given a guitar solo on ‘Guitar Boogie.’ I could play it easily in rehearsal but when the moment came in the performance I got sticky fingers. I was just too frightened. That’s why George was brought in….” Having Paul in the group helped John in his ambition to lead the group from its beginnings as a skiffle combo (the British equivalent of a jugband) towards the promised land of rock ‘n’ roll.
Photo: Leslie Kearney 1957 © 2010 The Quarrymen
