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Nowhere Boy (2009)

Director: Sam Taylor Wood

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From Time Out Online

Artist Sam Taylor-Wood has chosen a script by ‘Control’ writer Matt Greenhalgh about John Lennon’s teenage years on which to base her first feature, so entering the minefield of the music biopic. Happily, it’s a pleasing, invigorating success that sidesteps the music and the future to explore a moving and instructive story about the making of a young man.

‘Nowhere Boy’ is a modest film, not overly ambitious either in story or look, that offers a strong turn from lead Aaron Johnson as Lennon, attractive photography by Seamus McGarvey and a script that wisely keeps it eye on its subject while refusing to let later knowledge of The Beatles’ success or Lennon’s life infect a gripping sense of the here and now. Alarm bells ring early on when John walks past a sign for Strawberry Fields and doodles a walrus during history class, but Taylor-Wood and Greenhalgh are smart enough to keep such knowing nods to the bare minimum.

Mostly, this is a domestic story of family belonging in the 1950s suburbs as Lennon (Johnson) negotiates a path between his conservative auntie and de facto mother Mimi (Scott Thomas) and his absent, volatile birth mother Julia (Duff). So it should be. Lennon may have defined 1960s Britain but he was a product of the 1950s and it’s that country, Britain before Lennon, that Taylor-Wood so vividly recreates.

As an artist, Taylor-Wood is no stranger to the moving image. But here she shows that she is well able to create complex dramatic characters. Johnson’s Lennon, perhaps unsteady on his feet in the film’s earlier scenes, grows into a fascinating portrait, while Duff and Scott Thomas are the film’s twin pillars of support. It’s a strong debut that shows clever handling of both a period and a personality.

Author: Dave Calhoun 2009-10-20 16:47:09

Time Out Online London Film Festival 2009