Nowhere Boy: A Biopic That Almost Missed the Mark
This is the story of a young John, living with his aunt, underachieving in school, and discovering rock and roll. He meets his mother, who lives just across the street, and starts the band The Quarrymen. The film follows his youthful antics, his meeting with Paul McCartney and George Harrison, his first studio recording, and his departure from Liverpool to Hamburg, where he is destined to become the legend we know. “John, your glasses!” his prim aunt Mimi constantly reminds him. “Rock and roll is sex,” his free-spirited mother Julia declares, opening John’s eyes to the vibrant Liverpool of the 1950s.
In her feature directorial debut, British artist Sam Taylor-Wood presents a narrative driven by the dynamic between two women vying for the attention of the rosy-cheeked protagonist. Unlike some of the other characters, the casting choices here are spot-on. The emotional intensity of the maternal duo gradually overshadows the somewhat unremarkable details of the future star’s childhood. While the inventive musical score, featuring classic 50s rock and roll, is engaging, it occasionally feels overly insistent.
A Missed Opportunity for Lennon’s Music
It’s a shame that the film features so little of John’s own music (after all, the protagonist hasn’t yet become “Lennon,” according to the title), although the inclusion of “Mother” during the farewell scene is a poignant touch. Overall, this biopic is likely to appeal more to Anglophiles than Beatles fanatics. It’s for those who can appreciate the sight of a slicked-back teenager with a cigarette in his mouth riding on the roof of a bus through a port city that resembles an abandoned film set. Understanding the director’s own artistic background is crucial to appreciating this melodramatic work.
Taylor-Wood’s Artistic Signature: Death and Rebirth
The theme of death in Taylor-Wood’s art is almost always intertwined with the mystery of birth. In her famous video work “Still Life” (2001), fruit undergoes all stages of its life cycle, from ripeness to decay, before the viewer’s eyes. In telling Lennon’s story, Taylor-Wood doesn’t shy away from clichés, but, as in her photo project of weeping Hollywood actors (2002), she self-indulgently explores the disintegration of emotions into subtle nuances. However, this experiment hardly compares to the rather restrained “Hunger” by Steve McQueen, another British artist and director. In contemporary art, real men, it seems, still don’t cry.mpire