Nowhere Boy (***1/2)

This drama begins with a chord lifted from the start of the Beatles song “A Hard Day’s Night,” whose title might be some sort of metaphor for the career of John Lennon. The song was released in 1964, during the height of Beatlemania. The next year, they recorded “Nowhere Man,” which obviously inspired this movie’s title. The song, though, is about a man with no “point of view” making “plans for nobody,” whereas Lennon (Aaron Johnson), though without direction as a teenager, had a cockiness and drive that made him the opposite of the nonentity in the song.

Lennon’s fame came well after the period memorialized here, saving the producers a bundle in music rights. Beatles aficionados may recognize the early originals “Hello Little Girl” and “In Spite of All the Danger,” which didn’t make it onto their proper studio albums, and “Maggie Mae,” a non-original that did. They may notice John riding by Strawberry Fields in Liverpool near the start of the film. And they will anxiously await the inevitable moment when he’s introduced to the 15-year-old Paul McCartney after a performance by Lennon’s band, the Quarrrymen. But ultimately, this is the story of a teenage boy, not the story of a rock star. Judged strictly on that basis, the movie is still surprisingly entertaining, even moving.

It is the story of a somewhat rebellious teenager caught between two women. His magnetic personality seems drawn from his mother Julia (Anne Marie Duff), memorialized in a somber 1968 song of that name. But he was largely raised by his aunt Mimi, a hard woman portrayed with subtlety by Kristin Scott Thomas. In the movie version of things (a little simplified), Lennon barely knows his mother until he sees her at the funeral of his uncle, a surrogate father who dies at the start of the movie. It is the push-pull of these strong women that helps shape him. The one teaches him to play banjo, the other actually buys him a guitar. (Though in real life, Julia did both.)

Directed by Sam Taylor-Wood, Nowhere Boy is based on a memoir by Lonnon’s half-sister Julia Baird. The screenplay is by Matt Greenhalgh, who adapted another musical memoir in Control. That movie told the story of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, who committed suicide less than seven months before Lennon’s death. This movie, though, is full of life and worth seeing even for middling Beatles fans. Duff and Johnson capture the charisma and pathos of their characters. There is one solo Lennon recording, “Mother,” in the film. “You had me,” sang Lennon in the 1970 song, “but I never had you.” It plays over the closing credits.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 10/29/10