Nowhere Boy

Bleedin’ hell, The Beatles are just about everywhere these days, aren’t they? From repackaged, remastered remixes of their already digitally remastered but still somehow not quite remastered enough albums, to video games that let you don a plastic pudding bowl haircut (if only) and wield a plastic Rickenbacker/Gretsch/Hofner/Ludwig drumkit, and pretend to play some pandiatonic clusters while hoping to pass the audition, it might as well be 1962 – 1970 again.

As a Beatles fan since, oooooo, ages ago, I can’t say I really mind, because it’s refreshing to hear a “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” come blasting from your radio where moments before there was a “Puh-puh-puh pokerface.” But films about the Fab Four such as this latest offering from director Sam Taylor Wood have typically failed to raise my interest, as they never seemed to capture the spark present either in their music or in the films they themselves made.

In truth though, Nowhere Boy isn’t really about The Beatles at all. Instead, its focus is very much on pre-Beatle John Lennon (Aaron Johnson) and his relationship with both his Aunt Mimi (played with perfect sternness by Kristin Scott Thomas) and his absent mother Julia (Anne-Marie Duff). For Beatles fans — or anyone who’s ever read a book about them — the story is well-documented, and the sight of the Mendips house John shares with Mimi, The Quarrymen’s first town fair gig and the first meetings of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison will have a certain seen-it-all-before familiarity.

I suppose there’s an argument to be made that suggests undertaking such a well-worn story is actually quite a brave move on behalf of the filmmakers, since the only option available is to attempt to bring something new to the party, either injecting a bucketload of style and energy to proceedings, or telling the story from a whole new point of view. But Nowhere Boy never really reaches for those heights. It’s well put-together, well acted by all concerned (even if, at times, it feels like we’re watching caricatures of Lennon and McCartney) and is a reasonably diverting way of spending 90 minutes, but it also feels a bit like a TV drama special that might crop up around 10 o’ clock at night on the BBC.

Musically however, it acquits itself quite well, the only movie I can think of that has such a perfect (and familiar) opening chord. Johnson (or whoever provides his singing voice) does a pretty good John Lennon impression, while the soundtrack is peppered with tracks from the burgeoning 1950s rock ‘n’ roll scene. The Quarrymen have a fairly stompin’ skiffle sound, and the script seems to have been written by someone reasonably in tune with the connection between music and the soul. All of which might just make it worthwhile viewing for fans of music and fans of The Beatles. (True completeists could then immediately watch Backbeat, which more or less picks up where this film leaves off).

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