Nowhere Boy
Artist Sam Taylor-Wood is the subject of much recent tittle -tattle for getting engaged to Aaron Johnson, the star of her movie Nowhere Boy and 23 years her junior. But is the film, about John Lennon's early life and where the couple met any good? We find out.
John Lennon’s childhood was not an easy ride. Growing up in Liverpool in the 1950s in a family full of secrets, John (Aaron Johnson) has two incredible women clashing over him: Mimi (Kristin Scott-Thomas), the buttoned-up aging aunt who raises him but tries to smother his artistic ambitions, and his natural mother Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), an addicted-to-life extravagant redhead who loves him to shreds but is not able to keep him. Yearning for a normal family, John escapes to the world of rock n’ roll and founds the Quarrymen. Enter teenage Paul McCartney, a kindred spirit to John who encourages him to take their music to a further artistic level. Just as John is finding his way through music and through his personal memories, tragedy strikes. But this won’t stop him from becoming a music icon.
Nowhere Boy is appalling average, coming from the balancing of very good and very poor sides. First time director and renowned artist Sam Taylor-Wood pays great attention to the historic setting and has chosen highly skilled collaborators, notably scriptwriter Matt Greenhalgh and Director of Photography Seamus McGarvey.
Brisk dialogues and andante pace make the film an enjoyable watch. Yet, the directing is lazy and absolutely conventional. There isn’t a single moment when Taylor-Wood emerges as an artist, as all her choices of mise en scène are unoriginal and unsurprising. The film as a whole is well-told but lacks power and raw emotion.
It then dawns on you, that this project bears too many similarities with Control (2007) by Anton Corbijn: a biopic of a tormented music star directed by an artist and written by the same guy, Matt Greenhalgh. The main difference between the two is that in Control you could see the hand of the artist Corbijn in every frame. The late Anthony Minghella’s legacy (he had been Taylor-Wood’s mentor) can be found in the delicate but effective way family scenes are treated but nothing more than that.
The cast attracts mixed reviews as well: Aaron Johnson is a good actor but the two main actresses are the saving grace of the film, both sympathetic in their peculiar way, their scenes together are the best of the whole film. Scott-Thomas must be the best mature actress in the UK, choosing roles that don’t go against her age and the harshening of her features, but exploiting the changes in her looks as an asset, whilst Duff has great sensitivity and an amazing range of subtle nuances of sorrow.
