Nowhere Boy

Upon reading other comments, this film clearly polarizes viewers. I suggest you read the comment by someone called Phantom Fan who sums up a lot of the story and emotional content quite well in my opinion. As a result I need not repeat. I am old enough to remember the Beatles in their climb to fame, but this film is not about that. The film is about John Lennon at 15. This seems to annoy some viewers. If a person reads the ads and sees the trailer: it clearly says JOHN LENNON AT 15. So whining about the film not being about John Lennon at 25 and not being about The Beatles seems as though someone did not pay attention to the film's advertising information. What we do have however is a superb production set in the mid 1950s as rock n roll grabbed teens and John Lennon (aged 15) realized some emotional hard truths about his family and himself. It just these key emotional Lennon family earthquakes that is the story of this film. Not 'How The Beatles met". The tug of love between two brittle sisters and the increasingly shocked and troubled Lennon let us glimpse the deep ruptures in his romantic psyche that saw his scorching opinions and acidic wit build. This is a great film, the art direction and set design allow the viewer to feel as though they are there in those rooms on those days. Aaron Johnson is possibly too handsome for John and is photographed to boost his genuine beauty; the photography and the direction are terrific. Interesting for Australian cinema goers is that we are fortunate to have had two award winning films previously about similar family backgrounds: CAREFUL HE MIGHT HEAR YOU from 1983 written as a memoir by Sumner Locke Elliott about his life at 6 years old being bounced between two warring aunts and an absent father is almost identical family (flashbacks) background to NOWHERE BOY. Also Eric Bana's 2008 film with Kobi Smit McPhee called ROMULUS MY FATHER is almost a flip-side between a Dad trying to save his son from an unstable mother and her lovers. So perhaps we in Oz are better more willing to applaud NOWHERE BOY on this basis. I found every part of this film compelling and thought Johnson great casting for young Lennon. The two sisters and their unraveling personal issues from their fraught past made excellent drama. I went with it all and I suggest you do too. But be prepared to let it inform you rather than you demand 'a Beatles movie'. My only niggle is the fey depiction of a 15 year old cherubic sissy styled Paul McCartney. NOWHERE BOY went somewhere for me.

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.

I guess this would be considered an "a moment-in-the-life-of-biopic" as it focuses on only a couple of years of pre-Beatles John Lennon's life in Liverpool, England (and not his entire life). It is an interesting story and one I did not know. It asks and answers the question: Where did Lennon get his start and love for music?

The film's subject matter -- the early life of John Lennon -- made Nowhere Boy an interesting story and sell for me; and since the acting in the movie happened to be stellar -- it was a bonus. Aaron Johnson (Kick-Ass) does a decent job as the 15-year-old Lennon and proves to be one to watch as he's going to have a long career although the real acting "glory" of the film belongs to the two lead females who are left to battle it out as Lennon's motherly figure(s). Kristin Scott Thomas (Four Weddings and a Funeral, The English Patient) plays his aunt who has raised John from early infant-hood as her sister was considered to be an unlikely parent/guardian. In the film, John stumbles upon his birth mother out of curiosity and becomes intrigued with her demeanor. Actress Anne-Marie Duff (Notes on a Scandal, The Last Station) is rather revelatory here (BOTH her and Scott Thomas deservingly earned 2010 BAFTA nominations for these very roles).

The story is sentimental and tragic and it is tied together quite nicely by the three lead players who all play off of each other very well and convincingly (Duff is flighty, Scott Thomas is concerned and Johnson is a free soul). The young Lennon becomes a mixture of the two women (a poetic rebel) and their influences are highly evident in the film and his later music.

Any Beatles fan should check this one out. It isn't full of Hey Jude's and Elinor Rigby's but this is Pre-Beatles (we do meet a young Paul) so we get a taste of the kid before he become our "Nowhere Boy".

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)