Imagine…

By John Greco

“Nowhere Boy” gives us a close up view of the journey the angry young John Lennon was forced to travel in order to reach the heights of Beatle fame, fortune, and ultimately and sadly death. The filmmakers have been meticulous in recreating well known events in young Lennon’s  life from the clothes The Quarrymen wore at the fete where Lennon and McCartney would meet to the first privately paid demo recording of “In Spite of All the Danger” (They also recorded “That’ll Be The Day” at that same time).

In the beginning we meet Lennon (Aaron Johnson) living with his Aunt Mimi (Kristen Scott Thomas) and a fun loving Uncle George (David Threlfall).  Soon after, young John is forced to come face to face with his first look at death with his Uncle George dying. He then finds out his mother, Julia has been living only a short walking distance away and they begin a bumpy rebuilding of a relationship. Unlike the staid and prim Mimi, Julia is a partying demonstrative wildly flirting free spirit who loves to have fun. She teaches John to play the banjo and about Rock and Roll music.    

The music, and John reuniting with Julia, put him in conflict with Mimi who favors classical music, but John ever head strong and pushed on by his mother buys a guitar and forms a skiffle band with his friends.

It is at a local fete where The Quarrymen are performing that the fateful meeting between John and Paul (Thomas Sangster)occurs when they are introduced to each other through a mutual friend. Paul impresses John with his playing of Twenty Flight Rock and he soon joins the band. Aaron Johnson who plays Lennon gives one of the greatest expressions in the film when he  realizes Paul is good, and we the audience realize he is thinking ‘I want him in the band he’s good, but he could be a threat my leadership.‘

As John and his mother begin renewing their relationship, as well as Mimi and Julia repairing theirs, Julia is hit and killed by a drunken driver. John’s anger grows but out it come a fierce determination to succeed. The film ends with the John and the boys going off to Hamburg. Just on the horizon, the early beginnings of what would become known as Beatlemania.   

The title of the film is a play on words of the Lennon/McCartney song “Nowhere Man”, actually written by John and describing his own youth (He’s a real nowhere man/sitting in his nowhere land/doesn’t have a point of view/knows not where he’s going to), but it is the use of early rock and roll records that awakens the spark in the young lad that brings the film to life. When John trades some stolen Jazz 45′s for Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I Put a Spell on You” and plays it for his mother, asking if she is familiar with rock and roll. She admits she is and like her son has a love for music that exposes itself in a playful though somewhat sexually stimulating scene.  

As the young sensitive and emotionally hurting Lennon, Aaron Johnson captures the lead Beatles pain and anger as well as his biting humor and  tender moments.  Kristen Scott Thomas  depicts the essence of the stern,  proper and loving Aunt Mimi  while Anne-Marie Duff  as the flighty free spirited Julia is endearing and tragically sympathetic.