Fresh Reviews: "Nowhere Boy" (The Early Life Of John Lennon)

Rated R for sexual situations and strong language.

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John Lennon didn't exactly live the easiest or happiest of lives in his younger years. Filled with absentee parents, loss of loved ones and strained relationships, there would have seemed to be nothing about it to suggest that he would eventually become the iconic leader of the most legendary rock & roll band of all time. His story during those times is certainly something that real die-hard Beatles fans (and there are clearly plenty of them on Hubpages) are familiar with through books and magazines over the years. But there really is something about watching that story played out right in front of you that adds to your understanding of where Lennon came from in both the literal and figurative sense, and "Nowhere Boy" provides us with a virtual fly-on-the-wall perspective of those days.

In "Nowhere Boy", we watch as John (played in his teen years by Aaron Johnson) is taken from his mother (who had been abandoned by her husband when John was small) to be raised by his aunt Mimi, who was convinced that her sister Julia was too mentally unstable to be trusted to raise him. We see him suffer the loss of Mimi's husband, his beloved Uncle George, and then get his hopes up when he discovers Julia has been living all these years barely a few blocks away... but Mimi may have been right about her after all. Those who know John's music know the pain he sang about openly in songs like "Mother" (heard over the end credits) and somewhat more secretively in Beatles songs like "Help!". The life you see him live in this movie is where all that pain... and inspiration for some of his greatest music... came from.

The film makers are to be congratulated for not doing severe embellishments and grossly exaggerating the facts of Lennon's life, but that approach still wouldn't be of much help if the film wasn't so well made on so many levels. For starters, it's expertly performed... Aaron Johnson as John is a revelation, filled with all the anger and rebelliousness of youth as well as the love and kindness of the man who wrote "Imagine", and he makes you understand both his resentment and his love towards the overly protective Mimi and his mother Julia... and the creative, emotional release he found in music. Kristin Scott Thomas of "The English Patient" (the only cast member I'd actually heard of before) wouldn't have been my first choice for Mimi, but I guess that's why I'm not a casting director... she perfectly captures Mimi's deep love and devotion to John and makes you comprehend why she's willing to go to such extremes to protect him. And Anne-Marie Duff is nearly perfect in the difficult role of Julia... you always sense that she wants to love her son and believes that she does, but you're never quite sure if she's capable of that emotion.

The film ends just as John and the rest of the band (you know the one) are about to head off to Hamburg, Germany for their first performances there, so you don't hear a lot of the Beatles' music or for that matter see much of the other members of THAT band (Paul is a minor supporting character and George is present but just barely). But you do get an expertly crafted feel for the time and place, a sense that you really are watching Liverpool in the 1950's and not just a modern-day recreation of it. And you see plenty of Lennon's relationships with his early friends and fellow musicians from his original band, The Quarrymen (particularly Pete Shotten, who remained part of the Beatles' social circle for their entire existence) and watch John get his first glimpse of Elvis Presley and immediately realize what he wants to do with his life. It's non-stop fascinating for Beatles fans.

But the truth is that this movie would, I believe, work perfectly well for someone who not only is not a Beatles fan, but who doesn't even know who the Beatles were. The characters are vividly realized, their emotional traumas are made so authentic you can almost feel them, and you get a story which, at its core, is not entirely unlike the struggles other young people have gone through in other places and times as they try to find their place in the world in circumstances where the adults, and in particular their own families, don't on the surface seem to be very willing to provide help and support for that search. I won't for one second say that Beatles fans won't get more out of it than non-fans, but there's plenty to offer everyone, fan or no.

There have been plenty of movies made for both television and theatres over the years about the Beatles as a group and their individual members, and not by any stretch of the imagination can all of them... or even most of them... be said to be good. And I wouldn't be claiming that "Nowhere Boy" was a worthwhile movie if I didn't really think it was (even though I definitely am a Beatle fan from way back in the day). But "Nowhere Boy" is a movie that really does do right by the band and by John, and give you real insight into the man and the icon and the people who helped make him into that icon. It's not playing very widely, so it might be difficult to find, but if you have any interest at all in John Lennon and the Beatles, you will not be disappointed by this film. If only all the other Beatle bios could have been on this level.