Movie Review: Nowhere Boy

BIOPIC

NOWHERE BOY (The Weinstein Company)

STARS > Aaron Johnson, Anne-Marie Duff, Kristin Scott Thomas, Thomas Brodie Sangster, David Morrissey

DIRECTOR > Sam Taylor-Wood

RATING > 3/5

OPENS > OCT 8 [limited]

As music biopics go, Nowhere Boy makes an interesting narrative choice right off the bat. Rather than the standard rock-star rise, fall and redemption depicted in films like James Mangold’s 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line or even the rise, unraveling and death offered by Oliver Stone’s The Doors and Anton Corbijn’s recent Ian Curtis/Joy Division biopic Control, director Sam Taylor-Wood’s John Lennon flick focuses strictly on the future Beatle’s teenage years in postwar Liverpool. In fact, the word “Beatles” isn’t uttered once in the entire film. Control screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh’s Nowhere Boy script may or may not be based on Imagine This: Growing Up With My Brother John Lennon, the 2007 memoir written by Lennon’s half-sister, Julia Baird, but there are conflicting accounts about this.

Either way, the film explores young John’s relationship with his Aunt Mimi (Thomas), who raised him, and his mother Julia (Duff), who introduced him to the music of Elvis and encouraged him to pick up his first instrument. Kick-Ass star Aaron Johnson plays the lead to nigh-perfection, nailing both Lennon’s lilting, Liverpudlian cadence and the endearing adolescent swagger the future Beatle might well have had at that time. Thomas and Duff are excellent as well, playing stark opposites in flip-flopped roles. Though Julia is technically John’s mother, she has no real sense of maternal responsibility—she’s more like a fun young aunt who likes to party. Meanwhile, Aunt Mimi has the thankless task of raising a rebellious teenager who just wants to fuck off, rock out and party… with mom. As the why and wherefores of this unusual arrangement are eventually revealed, Johnny Boy has to make some uncomfortable decisions about his future.

Though the performances are spot-on, the film itself is almost cartoonishly orchestrated at times, with all the reverential montage and not-so-subtle Beatles references you’d expect from a film that can’t escape its reason for existence. No matter how much Nowhere Boy tries to be about John Lennon as an individual—and it mostly succeeds—it’s really about the ongoing cult of personality behind one of the world’s most enduring cultural phenomena. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. But try as one might, the viewer can never really shake the sense that they’re watching a movie about the Beatles rather than being fully immersed in a story that transcends that context.

Of course, the thing about biopics is that you always know the ending. In this case, John is off to Germany to play some shows with his new friends George and Paul. The rest, as they say, is for another movie.