Official Trailer For John Lennon Biopic ‘Nowhere Boy’ Revealed

Posted on 28 October 2009

 

 

The official trailer for ‘Nowhere Boy’ has hit the web. The directorial debut of Sam Taylor-Wood, ‘Nowhere Boy’ is based on the book ‘Imagine This: Growing Up With My Brother John Lennon’ by Julia Baird about her half-brother’s pre-Beatles life including when he first met Paul McCartney.

 

The film focuses on the years in which John Lennon was raised by his aunt, Mimi Smith, and later reacquainted with his biological mother, Julia. Lennon’s mother was tragically killed in an auto accident when John was just starting to get to know her in his late teens.

 

Goldfrapp have written the score for the film. Lead singer Alison Goldfrapp said that the group has written a traditional score for the movie, which is based around “very orchestral” music in a recent interview.

 

Producers are currently in negotiation with Yoko Ono to include original John Lennon songs in the film.

 

What do you think of the trailer?

 

 

Nowhere Boy

 

This tale of a young John Lennon, torn between his legendary mother and equally formidable aunt, is an accomplished feature debut from Sam Taylor-Wood

3 out of 5

 

o Peter Bradshaw

o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 October 2009 16.37 GMT

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/2009/10/29/1256834771794/Aaron-Johnson-as-John-Len-001.jpg

Aaron Johnson as John Lennon in Nowhere Boy (2009)

 

1. Nowhere Boy

2. Production year: 2009

3. Country: UK

4. Directors: Sam Taylor-Wood

5. Cast: Aaron Johnson, Anne-Marie Duff, Kristin Scott Thomas, Thomas Sangster

 

"A man who has been the indisputable favourite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror," wrote Sigmund Freud – and Sigmund Freud was never twirled by his mum lasciviously around in a coffee bar to the novel sounds of rock'n'roll on the jukebox, and furthermore gigglingly taught by her that "rock'n'roll" actually means sex.

 

This was the dizzyingly erotic experience of the young John Lennon – played by 19-year-old newcomer Aaron Johnson – in this account of his painful, messy teenage years in 1950s Liverpool, written by Matt Greenhalgh (the author of Anton Corbijn's Ian Curtis biopic, Control) and directed by Sam Taylor-Wood.

 

The mother in question is the legendary Julia, played by Anne-Marie Duff, a cheerful lover of good times and rock'n'roll in all senses, who had a mysterious breakdown after John's birth and surrendered parental control to her sister, the Tchaikovsky-loving and equally legendary Aunt Mimi, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, who brought him up strictly with genteel, middle-class values.

 

As adulthood dawns, John's increasingly rebellious discontent manifests itself in re-establishing contact with the dangerous Julia, who passionately introduces him to his musical destiny. She and John begin a strange kind of Oedipal affair, with Julia as the mistress and Aunt Mimi the wronged wife. John's story is the story of the duel between these two women – an intolerable situation for which music is the only way out.

 

Taylor-Wood interestingly begins her film with the opening, jangling chord from A Hard Day's Night, left hanging in a protracted silence until its potential for implied menace and even tragedy has been allowed to float free. It's a witty opening, but apart from pointed references to "nowhere" in the script and in the title, to a glimpse of Strawberry Field children's home and to a schoolbook doodling of "Walrus", Greenhalgh notably avoids cute prophetic touches. However, it has to be said Julia does hang around a bit possessively backstage, to the unease of both John and the young Paul McCartney, played by Thomas Sangster. Heroically, Greenhalgh avoids gags about John letting a woman get between him and the band.

 

It's a handsomely made film, with a very game lead performance from Johnson, hampered perhaps only by the fact that Lennon is really a rather callow figure at this stage; unlike, say, the more interesting, more grownup Lennon that Ian Hart played in Iain Softley's 1994 film Backbeat. When John shows Julia an EP record of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, she asks where he got it, and John says he swapped it with a bloke at the docks. "Swapped it for what?" Julia asks sharply, and John has no idea what she's implying.

 

Throughout the movie, I had the sense that Lennon was really a supporting turn and the stars were Julia and Mimi, but that, frustratingly, we were only ever allowed to see them from John's lairy and semi-comprehending point of view. John has to be the focus, and part of the movie's point is his youth, his poignant inability to appreciate how much these women love him.

 

And the film does contrive a tearful crisis in which the awful secret origins of the Mimi-John-Julia love triangle are laid bare. But for me, this finale was a little stagey, is resolved too easily and disconcertingly discloses a more intense story which has been happening, as it were, behind the movie's back.

 

None the less, this is an accomplished feature debut from Taylor-Wood, and a satisfying follow-up to her likeable short film Love You More.

 

This might be quite good actually, not enough good films about the Beatles. I recognise the guy playing Paul from an episode of Dr Who & the film Love Actually, seen guy playing John in a couple of things as well. The supporting cast look good too.

Beatles fans blast "outrageous fiction" of Nowhere Boy

by Angela Johnson (Click Liverpool)

Published Thu 05 Nov 2009 11:54, Last updated: 2009-11-05

 

A film detailing the early life of John Lennon has been condemned as "outrageous fiction" by Beatles experts.

 

Nowhere Boy, directed by artist Sam Taylor-Wood, and premiered at the London Film Festival, depicts Lennon's famous Auntie Mimi as a domineering harridan.

 

The screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh - who wrote the script for the 2007 Joy Division film 'Control' - is accused of distorting Lennon's childhood and adolescence.

 

In the film wild Julia and middle-class housewife Mimi Smith, who acted as his guardian, are shown as warring factions, battling for the affection of the young Lennon.

 

But experts on Beatles history say the suggestion that Lennon's mother and her elder sister were a "family at war" is nonsense.

 

Liverpool tour guide Phil Coppell condemned the film-makers and accused them of "sensationalising" the story in a bid to cash-in at the box office.

He said: "This film has taken its 'artistic licence' to the extreme and has fabricated a sensational story dressed-up as reality.

"It is outrageous since none of the people depicted in this film are here to defend themselves against this calumny.

"It is disappointing that an opportunity to set the record straight has been missed and there is a risk that terrible fiction will enter the public consciousness as the truth.

"There are differences of opinion regarding the relationship between Julia and Mimi.

"But there is plenty of evidence to show that they were certainly not a family at war as some bogus historians would have us believe.

"Julia played her part in John's upbringing.

"But equally he was happy with Mimi and her husband George who gave him a loving home and fostered his talents to help make him the free spirit that he was.

"It is outrageous that these film makers decided to twist the truth so ruthlesslesy for their own financial gain."

 

Sam Taylor-Wood confessed it was "difficult" to decided on the real truth in Nowhere Boy, the first ever feature length film about Lennon's early life.

 

She said: "Matt Greenhalgh wrote this story, he went through various biographies.

"The basis of his script was on a book by Julia Baird, John Lennon's half-sister. That was his starting point.

"Matt trawled through biography after biography and gathered as much information as he could.

"In the end he decided he had to sort of shut-off because there were so many conflicting stories.

"The rivalry over John Lennon between his mother and his aunt is a focal point.

"How much of it is true is difficult to answer, without being there in person. There are different versions of the truth.

"I'm sure if Mimi was here today she would have one version, and Julia would have another. As much as possible it's pretty close.

"The story is set in the time just before The Beatles go off to Hamburg. It's very much focused on John Lennon."

 

Nowhere Boy goes on general release in cinemas worldwide on 29th December, 2009.

There is no doubt film makers spice up scripts on films like this, as real life tends to be a bit dull, so they have to change things to keep the audience interested. This has always happened in the film business.