Two new films put microscope on Lennon’s life
The Beatles are still here, there and everywhere.
News last week that the band’s catalog finally would be available on iTunes made the front page of the New York Times. The “Glee” kids are making a whole new generation swoon over “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
Paul McCartney will be lauded next month during the Kennedy Center Honors. Fans are stealing bricks from Ringo Starr’s soon-to-be demolished boyhood home.
But none of the boys is causing as much of a stir as John Lennon, who would have turned 70 last month had he not been shot to death on Dec. 8, 1980.
A new 11-CD box set of his solo albums should be a holiday favorite. A coin with his iconic image was recently issued by the UK Royal Mint, beating out such luminaries as Jane Austen and Sir Walter Raleigh.
The indie film “Nowhere Boy,” which focused on his unorthodox relationship with his mother, received melodic reviews on the art-house circuit (in Spokane, it’s in its final week at the Magic Lantern Theatre). In August, his former toilet went for $14,740 at an auction.
But despite our never-ending fascination with the legend, he remains about as hard to decipher as the lyrics to “I Am the Walrus,” as evidenced by two wildly different TV projects: “Lennon Naked” and “LENNONYC.”
“Naked,” tonight’s installment of “Masterpiece Contemporary,” primarily deals with Lennon’s daddy issues and the fact that he felt abandoned as a child.
Christopher Eccelston (“Doctor Who”) plays the title character with both a trumped-up accent and attitude, slicing apart everyone who stands in his way.
He belittles wife Cynthia, tried-and-true manager Brian Epstein, long-lost father Freddie (a very good Christopher Fairbank), an unseen Brigitte Bardot and his bandmates, who come across as so cuddly they could have been portrayed by the Muppets.
Even his budding relationship with Yoko Ono (Naoko Mori) can’t melt the brittle Beatle. Could it be that writer Robert Jones and director Edmund Coulhard prefer Paul’s silly love songs?
Monday’s “American Masters” documentary “LENNONYC,” which picks up where “Naked” leaves us – the couple’s move to New York City – is a much more sympathetic piece. No surprise there, since Ono cooperated with the production.
Through director/writer Michael Epstein’s lens, Lennon comes across as a martyr in his home country who finally got the freedom and respect from fans that he deserved when he moved to the States – even as the U.S. government tried to have him deported.
Marquee names, including Elton John and Dick Cavett, speak lovingly of their friend and offer insights into his personal and professional life. (One tidbit: “Mind Games” was originally called “Make Love Not War.”)
That’s not to say the film is a whitewash. Ono and Lennon’s temporary lover May Pang speaks openly about his “lost weekend” in Los Angeles in the mid-’70s, when he succumbed to drugs, drink and eventually heartbreak over cheating on his wife.
It also doesn’t hesitate to suggest that Lennon’s last works bordered on mediocrity.
It’s not the most revealing or even-handed of portraits – for that, I would recommend Philip Norman’s book “John Lennon: The Life” – but it comes across as more honest and heartfelt than “Naked.”
Diehard fans, however, may be better off skipping all these biopics, and getting lost in the man’s music instead. Maybe that’s the only Lennon we need to know – or will get to know.