Imagine: John Lennon

This is a well done Andrew Solt documentary made up with some wonderful never-before-seen home movies. The late musician's own narration makes for an eerie portrait of the former Beatle. You will see John Lennon as being witty, sarcastic, determined and loyal; but also childish, bawdy, and irreverent. This multi-talented musician will be loved and remembered for generations to come. Over 30 songs make up the soundtrack. Very worthwhile and musically historic.

This was my bad, I mistook this as a Yoko exploitation vehicle when it was released and really deprived myself of an excellent biography. John Lennon, The Beatles still loom very large in pop culture and may for quite some time. But as a fan, I find most film documentaries generally are either too lengthy and even preachy or too segmented and incomplete; with nothing really doing the trick. So much so, that I think their music or silly Hollywood movies are still the best and most candid contact we have available. Having said that, by concentrating on John Lennon only, I think this film is able to rise above the rest of whats out there. It cleverly makes use of interviews and sound bytes by John so that he's almost narrating the entire film. It does not dwell too much on his time after the Beatles and with Yoko. Instead its a pleasant balance on all phases of his most fascinating life. There's a ton of stuff I had never seen before and even better, some complete takes of the familiar stuff we know too well. For instance, there is a comprehensive bit involving John and Yoko's bed in for peace that includes a nasty exchange with a pompous cartoonist. Also a terrific scene in a recording studio. The real stuff baby. I think its interesting that as time has passed, John's ideas just don't sound so ridiculous and drug induced as they once did. He instead really comes across as a visionary trying to make dullards and dimwits understand what are now extremely sane concepts. Very odd I must say.

IMAGINE: JOHN LENNON is a very personal and emotional scrapbook that takes us right into the mind and soul of the great artist who departed this world much to early. Largely comprised from hundreds of hours of Lennon interviews and personal home movies, this feature is narrated in John's own words, giving us a bird's eye view of his life and experiences before, during, and after The Beatles. It's a candid and close look at Lennon the musician, the husband, the father and, most significantly of all, the Man.

The documentary begins in 1971 at Tittenhurst Park in England, where John and Yoko lived and were then working on John's great IMAGINE album in a studio adjoining their home. Through John's own memories we then go backward in time to his birth, his rise to fame with the Beatles, the breakup of the group, his key meeting with Yoko Ono, all the exploits of John and Yoko through the late sixties and seventies, Lennon's retirement to raise his son Sean in 1975, and ultimately his happy comeback into the limelight in late 1980, when he was tragically assassinated and the entire world came to a screeching hault for millions.

For rabid Lennon fans there are very juicy segments included, such as John recording "How Do You Sleep" (his infamous swipe at Paul McCartney) with the assistance of George Harrison on slide guitar. We see the very candid and human sides of John from inside the glass of the recording studio as he swears at an engineer for not being able to send forward the proper pre-recorded verse of "Oh Yoko" so that Lennon can add his backing harmonies to it. A real treat is a lengthy segment from the 1969 "Bed-In" period where we get to see a visibly perturbed Lennon trying to maintain his peaceful stance while sparring with ultra-conservative artist Al Capp while the man continually attacks and insults John and Yoko right to their faces. Another key bit of business features Lennon storming into a newspaper office to confront a journalist who's just written a seething article denouncing the Lennons. A real gem of a clip concerns a scruffy hippie who's camped out at Lennon's garden overnight and tried to meet the famous ex-Beatle. With the cameras capturing their confrontation, John tries to explain to the far-out young man that he's just a regular guy who writes songs, some of which don't really mean anything special, and that he's only human. After this, John invites the hungry man into his home to give him breakfast.

John Lennon's appeal to the true fan was that he was very honest about who he was and what he believed in, and we could always relate to him and feel he was as real a person as we were. This film manages to capture the essence of John and it's a job very well done by director Andrew Solt, who had to plow through hundreds of hours of material, most of which must have been indispensable, to try and form a definitive representation of Lennon's whole life. If there is a tiny flaw in the film at all, it may be because John's life was so extraordinary that it's virtually impossible to get it all together in such a short space of running time; there is a sense of everything being squeezed together rather quickly (especially the Beatle years), where several hours would probably have been more adequate!

Yoko Ono has gotten such a bad rap over the decades, and that's a real shame, as it's so obvious through her own observations and actual on-film reactions here that she was as in love with John and as respectful of him as he was toward her. It should be understood and accepted that John wanted to be with Yoko and that she "saved him from a kind of death" (as he once said). It may be difficult for some to accept that Lennon drifted away from the idea of being "one of the boys" with the Beatles and getting married and devoting his life to his relationship with Yoko, but it's what made him feel happy and fulfilled. As John himself said in one of his very final interviews for PLAYBOY in 1980:

LENNON: "Listen, if somebody's gonna impress me, whether it be a Maharishi or a Janov or a Yoko, there comes a point when the emperor has no clothes. Because I do stupid things, I've done stupid things. I am naive but I'm also not stupid. So there comes a point where I will see. And nobody can pull the wool that long. So for all you folks out there who think that I'm having the wool pulled over my eyes, well, that's an insult to me. Not that you think less of Yoko, because that's your problem; what I think of her is what counts! But if you think you know me or you have some part of me because of the music I've made, and then you think I'm being controlled like a dog on a leash because I do things with her, then screw you, brother or sister... you don't know what's happening. I'm not here for you. I'm here for me and her and now the baby. Anybody who claims to have some interest in me as an individual artist or even as part of the Beatles has absolutely misunderstood everything I ever said if they can't see why I'm with Yoko." ***1/2 out of ****

As a big Beatles fan, I've seen lots of documentaries and shows about them; but this one has a lot of stuff I've never seen before, mostly because it focuses on John. The music of course is fantastic as always but what's most valuable is the candid looks we get at Lennon. A vagrant, probably stoned, confronts Lennon at his home in England, asking what the different lyrics mean and the ex-Beatle tries to talk some sense, comforting the confused man, and inviting him inside for a meal. It's even eerier considering what a later confused fan was to do. And some of the strongest parts of the film are long sequences of John confronting someone over his antiwar politics and tactics. Particularly Al Capp, famous cartoonist of "L'il Abner" who proves to be a royal a**hole here, insulting Yoko and John stays surprisingly level-headed throughout. It's a really dynamic scene. He actually loses his temper more when confronted by a NY Times reporter who tells him how immature it was for him to send back the MBE; he shouts back that maybe she liked the old him, the mop-tops and A Hard Day's Night but she needs to grow up. And finally, there's some footage taken not long before Lennon's death when a young man is thrilled to meet him, asking inevitably "When are you guys gonna get back together?" Little did he know that in a few days (or weeks, I'm not sure when this was taken) that dream would be shattered once in for all.

In 1987, seven years after John Lennon's tragic murder, a book came out. I've forgotten the title and the author, but it portrayed Lennon VERY negatively. It showed him as a cruel, egotistical monster who abused drugs and alcohol up to his death. The book was written by somebody who had never talked to anybody who knew Lennon. Yoko Ono was shocked and pushed to have this documentary made to set the record straight.

It's full of home movies, news footage, videos all narrated by John Lennon himself (he recorded over 200 hours talking about his life and work). It's not a whitewash of him--it does point out he was a mean drunk and he is shown swearing and telling off Phil Spector in a recording studio when a song was not working out. It also chronicles his remark about the Beatles being "bigger than Jesus Christ" and totally ignores how horribly he treated his first wife Cynthia. But, aside from that footage, there is also interviews with Johns wives, his children and, basically, everyone who knew him (curiously, none of the Beatles were interviewed). He comes across as a very talented, peace-loving man--he has his dark moments but everybody does. His confrontations with Al Capp and Gloria Emerson are just fascinating.

I remember seeing this in a theatre in 1988 and most of the audience walked out crying. 15 years later the ending still packs a punch. It shows people crying at the peace rallies held after Lennon's death and ends with the "Imagine" video him and Yoko did. Also "In My Life" plays over the closing credits. A fascinating, very moving documentary of a great man. Recommended.