A cheeky chap with
a broken heart
Sam Taylor-Wood's biopic of the young John Lennon gave Andrew M Brown a lump in the throat

25 December 2009

"You're going nowhere," the headmaster of Quarry Park grammar school, Liverpool, tells young John Lennon at the start of Sam Taylor-Wood's moving film. John (19-year-old Aaron Johnson) is a rebellious lad, a sort of Scouse cheeky chappie. We see him skipping school and riding around Liverpool "surfing" the roofs of buses with his best mate Pete (Josh Bolt), and receiving six of the best for possession of Parade magazine.

At least some of that cockiness must be put down to the dislocated upbringing he experienced. At the film's opening we find him at home at "Mendips", his aunt and uncle's neat semi in suburban Woolton, where he was brought up from the age of five after his natural mother gave him up and his father disappeared.

He is shown to be close to his Uncle George (David Threlfall, better known as Frank Gallagher in Shameless), a jolly, pipe-smoking fellow who shares John's interest in music and buys him his first harmonica. They listen to Hancock's Half Hour together and are boisterously affectionate - until George collapses suddenly and dies, and John is left in the care of Auntie Mimi (Kristin Scott-Thomas). Now, Mimi is an altogether chillier proposition. There's a telling scene in the kitchen at Mendips just after George's death where John, sobbing, sidles up to her in search of reassurance. Her bleak expression tells us she's bereft too, but she responds stiffly: "Let's not be silly. If you want to do that you go to your room."

As the director, Taylor-Wood, and the writer, Matt Greenhalgh, see it, Lennon's life in this period is a triangle involving him and the two middle-aged sisters with divergent personalities who clash over his upbringing. A cousin introduces John to his natural mother, Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), a redhead, after Uncle George's funeral. Julia is deliriously happy to be reunited with her son. In fact she verges on manic, and there is a suggestion she may suffer bipolar mood swings. She's a wild redhead and represents everything Mimi isn't.

Class naturally plays a part. Mimi anxiously aspires to gentility, which is reflected in her accent - posher than Julia's - plus her house has a name (Mendips) and is immaculately tidy, and she drinks Earl Grey.

Julia's house, on the other hand, is a slummy terrace where she lives with a common-law husband, Bobby (David Morrissey with a facial tic), and two daughters. It's a mess; Mimi calls the chaotic set-up there "common". All in all, where Mimi is uptight, Julia is flaky, emotionally incontinent and needy. Her past is littered with dodgy relationships - as Mimi says, she is the kind of woman who has always needed "company".

When Julia is dealing with John it's as if she can't decide whether he is her son or a good-looking lad she has a crush on. At times her gushing affection is too much for him: for example, he squirms when she takes him to Blackpool and, in a Kiss Me Quick hat, smothers him with kisses. Mostly, though, their deep friendship revolves around music. "D'you know that it means, rock 'n'roll?" Julia asks John. "Sex!"

It's about more than that for John. Seeing Elvis in a newsreel, and noting the effect he has on the cinema audience, then hearing Screamin' Jay Hawkins - these moments inspire him. He Brylcreems his hair, sets up a skiffle band (Mimi: "Not exactly Bach, though, is it?") and auditions a little 15-year-old called Paul. The movie does not contest the received view of Lennon and McCartney, that Paul was the boring one. "Wanna beer?" asks John. "Oh, I'd love a tea," Paul says. Paul lacks John's arrogant swagger, but he has the major qualification, which is that he can play the guitar properly. He acts as a tutor and disciplining force to John.

Sam Taylor-Wood is a conceptual artist famous for such works as David, a video of David Beckham sleeping. One might have expected her first feature film to show experimental touches but actually the style of it is understated and quite conventional. The writer Matt Greenhalgh worked on television shows with strong narratives such as Cold Feet and Clocking Off before writing the screenplay for Control (2007), the much-praised biopic about the lead singer of Joy Division, Ian Curtis. Probably Taylor-Wood and Greenhalgh felt that Lennon's early life was dramatic enough without any need for heightening devices. It was a life scarred by terrible sadness and one watches this film with a lump in the throat.