Film: Nowhere Boy

Critics have generally been very positive about this movie and they are right to be enthusiastic. This is a compelling movie from start to finish. Sam Taylor-Wood manages the transition from photographer and video artist to feature film director with consummate ease, in a debut which is beautifully shot throughout. The movie conveys with uncanny accuracy the semi-detached lifestyle of the late fifties with carefully nuanced dialogue illustrating the transition from the "respectability" of the fifties to the "freedom" of the sixties. Arguably the two decades are embodied by Kristin Scott-Thomas as Aunt Mimi and Ann-Marie Duff as Julia. It is impossible for us to know whether Aunt Mimi was always so controlling or Julia so unremittingly fun-loving, but it was this duality that fashioned young Lennon and it is his experience of these two powerful women that is the essence of this film.

Taylor-Wood has paid astonishing attention to detail. The Quarrymen's performance at Woolton Village fete convincingly brings the black and white photographs of the event to life. Aaron Johnson uncannily reproduces Lennon's swagger and poses. There is nothing sentimental about this film which does not shirk from showing us the seeds of the sadistically cruel streak we later knew Lennon to possess.

The soundtrack is carefully chosen but was clearly unable to quote from even early Beatles songs, apart from that chord from "A Hard Day's Night" which accompanies the opening shots on the steps of St George's Hall and a rendering of "Hello Little Girl" (never a major Beatles release, but a hit for The Fourmost), as John demonstrates his embryonic song-writing ability to Paul.

Pivotal events in Lennon's development are incredibly well-handled, not least Lennon's first meeting with McCartney. Throughout the film Lennon refers to "my band;" so how is he to deal with a talent which he immediately recognises to be as much a threat as an asset? Initially dismissing the more refined Paul, he is summoned back when another of the Quarrymen observes that it would be "better to have him in our band than someone elses." Julia's death in a road traffic accident is dealt with dramatically, but sparingly with the focus, rightly being on the consequences rather than the event itself.

That Sam Taylor-Wood immersed herself fully in her work is beyond doubt (no doubt Aaron Johnson, to whom she is now apparently engaged, would testify to this). This is a superbly crafted film with not a shot wasted nor a word out of place, as the story of how the complex creative genius that is John Lennon came to be created. This is, quite simply, a triumph.

Click on the title of this post to get to the film's official website.