The Latest Non-Beatles Beatles Film
Years ago I discovered the 1994 film Backbeat about The Beatles before they became famous. That film was directed by Ian Softley and starred Ian Hart as John Lennon, Stephen Dorff as Stu Sutcliffe, Sheryl Lee as Astrid Kirchherr, Kai Weisinger as Klaus Voorman, Gary Blakewell as Paul McCartney, Chris O'Neill as George Harrison, and Scott Williams as Pete Best. (Mr. Hart had played Lennon in an earlier film, The Hours and Times (1991), a fictionalized account of what may have happened when John Lennon and Brian Epstein, who was gay, went on holiday together to Barcelona in 1963.) Not only did Mr. Hart look like Mr. Lennon, but he was born in Liverpool, Merseyside, and spoke with a Scouse accent—supposedly closer to Irish than English. The tagline of Backbeat was "5 guys, 4 legends, 3 lovers, 2 friends, 1 band."
The plot of Backbeat takes The Beatles to Hamburg, where Stu Sutcliffe, a very close friend of John's from the art school in Liverpool, and the original bass player, develops a relationship with free-spirit Astrid, who took some classic photographs of The Beatles. When Stu leaves the band for Astrid, John is at a loss, and the suggestion is made that John loves Stu which is clearly true. (Astrid's former lover, Klaus Voormann, displaced by Stu, later played bass on John Lennon's album Imagine and designed The Beatles' Revolver album cover.) When Stu dies of a brain hemorrhage, John is inconsolable, but the band plays on, with Paul switching to bass and Ringo replacing Pete Best as the drummer. The music for the film was generated by Don Was, who assembled a band that was probably better than The Beatles were at that time. He could not use any Lennon-McCartney songs so he used Long Tall Sally and the like. I liked the soundtrack so well I bought it as well as the DVD.
Anyhow, Backbeat was then, Nowhere Boy is now. The film was released last fall in the U.K. but will not be released in the U.S. until October, 2010. It has already been released on Blu-ray disc in the U.K., which I how I saw it. I was interested in the earlier work of Aaron Johnson after seeing him in Kick Ass a few weeks ago. After learning he was British I looked through the Amazon.co.uk catalog and came up with a few things he had done. One was Gurinder Chadha's (Bend It Like Beckham) film Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008)—sort of a chick flick. The other was Nowhere Boy (2009).
Nowhere Boy starts earlier than Backbeat, even before there was a group called The Quarrymen. It stars Aaron Johnson as John Lennon, Kristin Scott Thomas as Mimi Smith (Lennon's aunt who raised him from the age of 5), Anne-Marie Duff as Julia Lennon (Lennon's mother), Thomas Sangster as Paul McCartney, and Sam Bell as George Harrison. This debut feature of Sam(antha) Taylor-Wood tells the never-seen-before story of John Lennon's childhood. It was nominated for four BAFTA awards, and won other awards for both Aaron Johnson and Anne-Marie Duff.
At the beginning we see a directionless John Lennon at 15, failing at school and pulling pranks, living with his stoic aunt Mimi and boyishly playful uncle George. When George dies suddenly, John is shaken. Mimi is hard to approach—similar to my own English aunts. At the funeral John sees his mother among the mourners, but does not pursue her. A short time later a friend takes him to his mother's home nearby which she shares with her two daughters and their father, Bobby. Julia Lennon seems to have the hallmarks of a manic depressive. She introduces John to rock'n'roll, telling him the name means sex, and teaches him to play the banjo. They travel to Blackpool and have a blast, but it feels uncomfortably close to a date. But she is neglecting her daughters and pissing Bobby off. It is Mimi who buys John his first guitar, for £7, but she later takes it and sells it when he neglects his studies. Julia gives him the money to buy it back.
The plot gets heavy when we learn how Mimi took possession of John at the age of five as Julia bottoms out when John's father wants to take him to New Zealand and nearly kidnaps him. Julia's death after being struck by a drunk driver occurs just after the two sister reconcile and just before John's 17th birthday. The Quarrymen at this point have Paul McCartney, who lost his own mother and consoles John, and George Harrison, the youngest of the lot, whose age would become a plot device in Backbeat, and are developing a following. John mentions that his apartment is sparsely furnished but has some of "Stu's artwork." However, we never meet Stu in this film, and the only Pete in the film is not Pete Best, though John announces to Mimi that the band is going to Hamburg. The name The Beatles is never spoken.
The film does start, however, with the opening chord of A Hard Day's Night (TWANG!) with John running as if away from a bunch of screaming girls, but it is only a dream—and a clever script device. There are complaints that Aaron Johnson is too handsome as John, too much older than Paul and other boys in The Quarryman, and without the edge displayed by Ian Hart in the two earlier films. I think Ian Hart did the better job, but Lennon is younger here. Thomas Sangster as Paul McCartney looks young, is a bit fey, and is too goody-goody. (The real Paul claimed to have sex at 15 with an older baby sitter.) The film has an overvoice of the real John Lennon in a couple of places, and has him singing his song Mother at the end. Yoko Ono is thanked among the credits. Paul McCartney reportedly made some suggestions regarding the script, but did not participate and is not thanked. To its credit the film captures Liverpool in the 1950s pretty well. We see ferries on the Mersey, a quick glimpse of a Strawberry Field sign, John's school, and John's house.
IMdB.com has the film rated at 7.0/10.0. I might go a notch higher. All in all I liked the film, and plan to watch it again.
Mr. Johnson, then 18, got Ms. Taylor-Wood, then 42, pregnant. There is a brief scene in the Extras on the disc that show them together, looking like a couple. (Supposedly the child was due in January, 2010.) In the extras, Taylor-Wood states that Mr. Johnson was one of the first to read for the part, and she wanted him, but that she interviewed many to satisfy others with a stake in the film. One has to wonder what was on her mind from the beginning.
