Nowhere Boy

Nowhere Boy

Directed by Sam Taylor-Wood

Runtime: 97 min.

Nowhere Boy’s character study of John Lennon concentrates on his adolescence, but the film doesn’t infantilize him. Director Sam Taylor- Wood is interested in capturing Lennon before he became famous as a member of The Beatles. She avoids celebrity worship by shifting focus from Lennon to the mother and aunt who influenced him. This Lennon (played by Aaron Johnson) is a genuine clever bastard (“Is there a place for geniuses? I belong there,” he says to a schoolmaster) attempting to realize himself within the strictures of Aunt Mimi (Kristen Scott Thomas), who raised him, and despite the shock of discovering that his mother, Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), had abandoned him. Nowhere Boy makes Lennon’s rocky personal journey parallel the cultural upheaval of rock ’n’ roll—a revolution that changed social custom, family life and private instinct.

Taylor-Wood brings out sensuality as a driving force of this cultural revolution; it comes through the way young Lennon’s artistic and sexual ambitions derived from the influence of a domineering woman and a seductive one. Richly, compellingly Oedipal, this biopic is about the period when social change started within: music was a part of daily life (living room pianos being replaced by phonographs) and even boys’ fashions expressed their new sexual license (Lennon maneuvering among Teddy boys, mods and rockers).

Best of all, Taylor-Wood never uses the contrasting matriarchs for facile feminist value judgments. Nowhere Boy is a vibrant testament to the power of two different types of women, both products of their time yet strongly individual. Her point is that life and family history were bigger than Lennon and marked him even before he became a legendary musical/ social figure. The concept is both artconscious and emotional, reminiscent of Doug McGrath’s Infamous (about Truman Capote) and Darnell Martin’s Cadillac Records. Like those remarkable films, Nowhere Boy is awesomely, memorably well-cast and performed.

Aaron Johnson exhibited no such budding virility in Kick-Ass. In Taylor- Wood’s context, he can only be described as nubile and is lovingly photographed by Seamus McGarvey. Johnson’s sexy, sheepish, chin-forward look captures Lennon’s brash egotism: He knows a smart, mama’s boy’s way around women. Anne-Marie Duff embodies the “seashell eyes, windy smile” Lennon sang about in the song “Julia”; her teenage rapport with her own son is as inspiring as it is vexing to everyone else. Kristen Scott Thomas etches Mimi’s stern, puzzling affection that grows with each scene. Their family-ness is complex—from the way Lennon plays the women against each other to their loving, tough sisterhood. Taylor-Wood even situates Julia and Mimi in a reunion scene right out of Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies—an homage that fittingly appreciates what’s at stake in this melodrama without indulging clichéd cynicism about “the family.”

Taylor-Wood’ use of Lennon’s “Mother” from his 1970 post-Beatles, primal scream solo album is too blatant— especially after showing such a clear, not-obvious touch for the emotions and neuroses involved. The way Lennon stares at a new red guitar in his bedroom, or the sequence of him practicing guitar in real time while mundane life whizzes by in fast motion, condenses arduous progress and private concentration. Her good instincts avoid hagiography, which was the downfall of Matt Greenhalgh’s previous script for Control, the biopic about Joy Division’s Ian Curtis. Nowhere Boy is far more accomplished, inventive and felt.