Nowhere Boy

It was very interesting to see a biopic focusing on icon John Lennon's early life, or shall we say teenage years, rather than his climb to fame with The Beatles. While not one of the best biopics out there, 'Nowhere Boy' luckily is the opposite of the film's title.

'Nowhere Boy' has its flaws. The exposition in the final act is rather clunky, and some of the drama gets over-sentimental and melodramatic, also somewhat over-heated. While Sam Taylor-Wood doesn't do a bad job directing there is a little too much of a measured approach when it could have been tighter. That it is very inaccurate wasn't as big a problem for me, biopics are not exactly known for their accuracy and many have done far worse jobs.

However, the period is very evocatively rendered and done justice by photography that has style and grit. The music is great.

There are some thoughtful moments in the script, and there is a nice balance of moments of poignant drama and pop history. The story is often engrossing and is pretty illuminating, not really making the mistake of saying little new that we don't know already.

Aaron Johnson is highly credible as Lennon and more than holds his own against the more experienced actresses Kristin Scott Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff. Scott Thomas in particular is marvellous and Duff is a fine contrast.

Overall, pretty good and interesting. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Nowhere Boy is a film based the biography, Imagine This: Growing Up With My Brother John Lennon," written by his half sister Julia Baird. It tells the untold story of the late teenage years of one of the greatest musicians of all time, John Lennon and the strong influences his mother Julia Lennon (Anne-Marie Duff) and his aunt Mimi Smith (Kristin Scott Thomas) who created the foundation for his future as a person and the indelible mark he was about to leave on music forever. The film has created quite a racket throughout the UK since its release in December 2009 capturing four well deserved British Academy Film Award nominations including; Outstanding British Film, Best Supporting Actress Anne-Marie Duff and Kristen Scott Thomas and Outstanding Director Debut Sam Taylor Wood. These awards are the fire that the film is running off of for its debut in the United States this month.

Aaron Johnsons does a very good interpretation of his character John Lennon and reveals the mischievous antics of the teen aged John Lennon and the constant internal battle Lennon fought inside of himself to find out who he was. He is guided by the outstanding performances of Duff and Thomas as his guardians through his very rough childhood. Duff leads the cast with the best performance in the entire film by seamlessly embodying the character of John Lennon's mother Julia and has an American Oscar Nomination waiting for her in the upcoming months. These performances combined with the unique storytelling style of Director Wood and writer Matthew Greenhalgh with the help of Julia Baird's memoirs have created a film that is very different than a lot of films that focus on the lives of renown figures in history. They do this by focusing a narrow period of time allowing them to delve deep into the plot and story development giving the audience time to take in the entirety of the story, instead of stretching the film over a twenty plus year period of time.

The integrity that Wood and Greenhlgh produce with this style of filming allows the acting performances to flourish and creates the lost persona of the John Lennon, to be fully exemplified. I recommend seeing it now in order to be apart of the audience taken on the journey of Nowhere Boy. This journey of the "Nowhere Boy" himself is embodied by the lyric of the following song Mother from his debut solo album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, "Mother, you had me but I never had you. I wanted you, you didn't want me. So I just got to tell you goodbye, goodbye..."

This biopic of John Lennon, taking his story from his schooldays in Liverpool up until the departure of the nascent Beatles for Hamburg, is an exceptional movie, quite the best I have seen during 2009. The story is beautifully handled from beginning to end and the acting from the three main leads is superb. Aaron Johnson manages to portray Lennon's mixture of cockiness (in more ways than one!), aggression, painful vulnerability, bewilderment and sheer adolescent verve with great sureness of touch. We watch Lennon developing from school-kid into knowing young man, and we literally see a different face at the end of the movie to the one we did at the start. Superb playing by Johnson, brilliantly assisted by that of Kristin Scott Thomas as his Aunt Mimi and Anne-Marie Duff as his mother, Julia. It would have been all too easy to lapse into cliché with this story but this is largely avoided. We get glimpses of Liverpool - an opening on the steps of St George's Hall, a fleeting glimpse of Strawberry Fields, a shot of a ferry on the Mersey - but these glimpses are all we need. And the movie closes not with a rendition of an all too predictable 'Nowhere Man' but a beautifully performed 'In Spite of All the Danger'. They say it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock n' roll; in Nowhere Boy we can see where it, and we, all began.

This is about John Lennon's teenage time, when he lived with his aunt Mimi. He has problems at school, encounters teddy boys, starts The Quarrymen and meets Paul and George.

The story is a rhapsody, including Lennon's attempts to recontact his half-crazy mother. There's the triangle Mimi/Mum/John which finally brings an eruption. The heat is really on here and then, Lennon and The Beatles go to Hamburg.

Entertaining certainly, but most credits go to Kristin Scott Thomas, which was to be expected. Kudos to the Liverpool accent, one of many thing Lennon taught us to love.

I knew very little about Lennon – a Beatle, shot dead at age 40, all round musical god to millions – before seeing Nowhere Boy. I know more about him now, but not as much as I'd hope. Matt Greenleigh's screenplay, based on Julia Baird's (Lennon's sister) memoirs, covers only a small period of the rocker's life, more specifically between the ages of 16 and 20. These were the years when Lennon met his real mother and learnt the truth about how he ended up living with his Aunt Mimi. Oh, and he also met Paul McCartney and George Harrison. However the film strongly focuses on his familial issues and leaves the formation of his band as a sidenote, which is a real shame because as an ignorant fan it would have been great to learn more about the Lennon / McCartney dynamic and how The Quarrymen-cum-Beatles grabbed the world's attention.

In her sophomore effort as director, Sam Taylor Wood brings a nice artistic edge to the proceedings although her picture isn't always as compelling as it should be. There are a handful of powerful scenes that'll get the heart pumping though; a tense, all-cards-on-the-table discussion between Lennon, Julia and Mimi is Nowhere Boy at its best. With the assistance of DP Seamus McGarvey, she manages to capture the mood and gloom of 50's London extremely well, the chilly weather a perfect excuse for kids everywhere to dress like Elvis.

Perhaps most importantly, Wood has extracted a fine performance from the 19 year old Johnson; his brash, confused Lennon is never less than convincing. Always reliable, and almost stealing the show, is Kristin Scott Thomas as the stern but devoted Aunt Mimi. She gives Mimi so much depth and unsaid emotion, it is tour de force to witness. Not quite as engaging is Thomas Sangster as McCartney and Anne-Marie Duff as Lennon's completely bizarre mother Julia.

A small, but interesting insight into the musical genius that was John Winston Lennon.

3.5 out of 5 (1 - Rubbish, 2 - Ordinary, 3 - Good, 4 - Excellent, 5 - Classic)