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A review: Nowhere Boy
NOWHERE BOY (15 ) 1 hr 38 mins Starring: Kristin Scott-Thomas, Anne- Marie Duff, Aaron Johnson Directed by: Sam Taylor-Wood At the Ritz 15 – 21 January
As John Lennon went on to sing on Nowhere Man: "the world is at your command!". This is the story of the Nowhere Boy who, to quote another line from the song - "knows not where he's going to" – but, as we all know, went on to command global fame, attention, adoration and notoriety.
Thus, although this is actually an ordinary tale of an unsure boy growing up, the knowledge that it's Lennon makes the story more fascinating and significant.
What also makes it immensely satisfying is that the first-time director, the conceptual artist Sam Taylor-Wood, doesn't overly signpost the significance as if to shout "Look! This is the boy who became a Beatle".
For instance, when Lennon is refused entry to The Cavern, we are simply left to smile at the irony as he walks disconsolately away rather than hear the young rebel mouth to the bouncers something to the effect that they'll one day lick his boots.
Furthermore, screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh, who knows a thing or two about tortured souls – winning a BAFTA for Control, his biopic of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis – hasn't sugar-coated his portrayal of the soon-to-be-loved moptop.
As Lennon himself said: "I was never loveable". Greenhalgh has especially tapped in to Lennon's statement that "I was always a rebel, but I wanted to be loved and accepted" with the film depicting the coming-of-age of a difficult, delinquent boy complicated by the two chalk-and-cheese sisters who shaped his upbringing and whose portrayals are just as rich and revealing as that of the boy Lennon.
Kristin Scott-Thomas gives a nuanced performance as his starchy, sensible and strait-laced Aunt Mimi who raised John, with Anne-Marie Duff equally as effective in conveying his loveable, colourful, fun-loving mother Julia who gave him up when he was five.
As we enter Lennon's life as a 15 year-old, Julia herself re-enters her son's life and although it's she who is seen to encourage John's interest in rock'n'roll, while Mimi contents herself with classical music, Lennon is still torn between the two women in his life.
Newcomer Aaron Johnson (previously cast alongside Derbyshire's Georgia Groome in Angus Thongs...) is no dead ringer for Lennon but he nails the cockiness, swagger, sarcasm and anger we came to know while also reaching into his sensitivity.
I wished for more moments like the one in which Lennon plays his first gig, depicting a youth brimful of confidence, a lost and lonely soul who had clearly found his forte.
The following scene, the first meeting between Lennon and McCartney, is effectively restrained yet still had me rapt with the wonder and resonance of that moment in time when we now know the world changed.
There are further eye-moistening moments, like when John and Paul play in the front room and later, with George Harrison on board, sing at their first studio recording.
However, these are the icing on a layered cake of a film where at the film's close, with Lennon aged 19 and Hamburg on the horizon, anyone with an interest in The Beatles will have found rich food in this affecting tale of English suburban lower middle-class life… a life of post-war austerity and ordinariness that was soon to change into something freer, more liberated and exciting, all because of a nowhere boy who found where he was going to.
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Wednesday 08 February 2012
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