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.

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viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 10/29/10

Of Time and the City (*1/2)

Outside of England, the only thing people probably know about the city of Liverpool is that it was the hometown of the Beatles. After seeing this film, you will know two things, the other being that it was also the hometown of writer-director Terence Davies, best known for his 2000 adaptation of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth. Not so much a history of the city as Davies’s nostalgic audiovisual memoir, mostly of the late 1940s through about the mid-1960s, it is clearly a deeply personal, carefully crafted film. Nonetheless, this doesn’t prevent it from being a dreadful bore.

The Beatles do show up, but for less time than a 1970 song (“He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”) by Manchester’s Hollies is used, oddly, to illustrate footage of returning Korean War veterans. According to the narration Davies pompously provides, he had by 1970 lost interest in popular music, as well as his faith in God and queen. Religion and monarchy bring out snide sarcasm (the queen and her husband are “Betty and Phil”), but that’s at least a relief from the poetic pretention that Davies otherwise employs, e.g., blankets that “warm but give no comfort”—why’s that?

Primarily, the visuals are street scenes of ordinary citizens, quaintly dressed, that do convey the sense of long ago, longer even than the 50 or 60 years ago from which they actually date. In a few cases, important persons or events or prominent buildings are seen, but little information is imparted. Apparently it is enough for us to know that these are the scenes Davies recalls, bittersweetly but mostly fondly, in his mind. I longed at least for some on-screen descriptions. Although the footage skips about in time, the newest—dreary public housing in the 1960s and 1970s, casually dressed diners and shiny buildings in newly filmed scenes—is shown, by way of contrast, toward the end. The newer the footage, the more likely it is to be in color and of greater technical quality; this has the unintended effect of suggesting steady improvement, though if anything Davies intends the opposite.

It seems wrong to slam a work that was obviously a labor of love, and made with obvious attention. But there are ways to make a work personal while engaging the audience. For most viewers, watching this may be a chore.

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viewed 4/5/09 at Bridge (Philadelphia Film Festival) and reviewed 4/6/09