Nowhere Boy

Bea says: As the daughter of a Liverpudlian, the niece of a major Beatles fan, and as they were the soundtrack to much of my childhood and adolescence, I felt I had to see this film about John Lennon's early life. I knew bits and pieces of it - that he was brought up by Aunt Mimi because his mother couldn't look after him, and about Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane as they were places my family talked about too. As I grew up in South Australia - about as far from Liverpool as you can get, geographically - these places seemed like something out of a storybook. I knew that John Lennon lived near - or in - the area my grandmother grew up in, and that my mother was born in the same hospital, as this was the kind of thing my family talked about.

So it was with pleasant anticipation that I settled down in the Vue cinema in Hull to see this film, and it didn't disappoint. Two hours flew by as the film focussed on a year or so of Lennon's life - trouble at school, the forming of the skiffle band The Quarrymen, the fated meeting with McCartney, and most importantly being reunited with his mother Julia, and his subsequent relationship building with her, and Mimi, under these changed circumstances. I think the film presented a fair and even-handed view of Lennon from what I know of him, and Julia and Mimi were sensitively handled. McCartney was extremely baby-faced and rather goody-two-shoes, but as he is still a bit like that now I expect that was the truth. I did wonder however whether the writers/directors were going easy on McCartney as the only Beatles member from that era (Ringo was not part of this film) still alive.

I must say that this film showed a side of 1960s sex I hadn't seen before - when Lennon nips off to the woods with a pretty female school friend I expected the usual wham, bam, thank you ma'am (and we do get this later), but much to my surprise the scene showed Lennon pleasuring the young woman before anything happens to him at all. A very considerate lover for those times, I would have thought.

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Cecil says: I thought this film would be packed-out in Hull, a Northern city with a tradition of spawning young musical talent. The queue was certainly long to get tickets, but with only a dozen or so others in the room with us, I guess they were all heading to watch Avatar or Sherlock Holmes. Sad.

This was a delightful film. The music was fab. None of the major Beatles hits (and somehow they contrived never to utter the word 'Beatles' even when it was specifically mentioned that the band had changed name), but some great rock 'n' roll classics, which made me want to go straight out and buy the film soundtrack.

As Bea said, the film focused on the family triangle of Lennon, his Mum and his Aunt Mimi. Mimi the solid support, who bought his first guitar, but also confiscated it when he misbehaved; his Mum the creative and musical influence, teaching him to play banjo and encouraging his musical talent.

You get a hint of Lennon's short temper and tendency to violence, especially after the death of his mother. But above all, you feel the straitjacket of late 50s/early 60s caution and constraints working against anyone trying to do something out of the ordinary. This is the second film we have seen in recent weeks dealing with this period (see An Education) and how tough it was to defy the norms of the period. I can remember schools career sessions in an early 1970s Hull comprehensive, where I was being advised to look at banking as a career even though I had 'university' written all over my school reports. Banking was safe (!!) and ten years earlier, when this film was set, safety and security seemed far more appealing to struggling adults than a career in music...So much easier these days to follow your instinct and take risks, even in a recession.

Highly recommended.

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