Nowhere Boy

Director: Sam Taylor-Wood
Writer: Matt Greenhalgh
Starring: Aaron Johnson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Anne Marie Duff
Release Date: October 8, 2010
Length: 1 hour 28 minutes

The unknown story of John Lennon’s interesting upbringing in Liverpool, just before The Beatles were created, has been made into an award winning film, which has finally reached North American audiences. Sam Taylor Wood’s Nowhere Boy won almost every award at the BAFTAs, which took place almost a year ago in the UK. Now we finally have a chance to see what all the fuss is about. Aaron Johnson stars as the young John Lennon (of whom he is a spitting image of). John lives with his Aunt Mimmie (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Uncle George, who he has always lived with. When his uncle unexpectedly dies, he sees his mother, Julia (Anne Marie Duff) at the funeral. Despite his aunt persuading him to avoid seeing his mother (her sister), John’s curiosity gets the better of him. He shows up at his mother’s door that excites her beyond belief and the two form a relationship, hidden from his Aunt Mimmie. Julia teaches John to play the banjo, buys him his first guitar and continues to mend their relationship by constantly having fun with him. At this point, John decides he wants to start a rock n’ roll band, which causes suspicion within his aunt. When his aunt figures out what is going on between John and her sister, John realizes his mother might just not be the fun happy woman he thought she was and there’s quite a lot he doesn’t know. His strenuous complicated family problems all radically change his life at the tender age of 17. The most refreshing part of this film is that this is not a bio-pic of how The Beatles were created because many (if not most) already know that story. This is an untold inside look at the quite regular adolescence of one of the most iconic musicians of all time. Of course Matt Greenhalgh’s script connects the beginnings of The Beatles with John Lennon’s youth, but he does it in the smallest way that get’s you excited because you know that when he meets, for example, 15 year old Paul McCartney for the first time, the pair will most definitely meet again. Lennon’s family story is the focus of the film, which is obviously intriguing because it is a story we don’t know too much about. Probably what was the best part of the film however was the incredible acting. It certainly did not come as a surprise that the queen of acting herself, Kristin Scott Thomas was again fantastic. She perfectly captured the rigid, distant but loving character of John’s Aunt Mimmie. What was most surprising was that Scott Thomas was working with actors just as incredible as she was. Anne Marie Duff might be better known to her UK audiences, but in North America, we surely haven’t seen a whole lot of her. This being the first film I’ve seen of Duff’s, I was completely blown away by her performance. She beautifully played the child like naïve mother of John Lennon whose distant circumstances with her son have made her unstable.  She did one of the rare performances that make you hate and love the character for different reasons. Last but not least, the star of the film itself, Aaron Johnson was terrific as John Lennon. Not knowing what John Lennon was like in his teen years, I was unaware if Johnson was trying to do a justifiable portrayal as Lennon or if he took creative license with his character and interpreted him in his own way. Whatever he did worked wonderfully though. Johnson showed us a distraught, confused, sometimes cruel and sometimes pathetic teenage boy. He perfectly displayed the confident, jerk-like, reckless person he was with his friends and then the real vulnerable innocent person he was with his family. Nowhere Boy is an enjoyable well done film that tells a simple captivating story of someone who grew up to a complex icon.