Sundance 2010: NOWHERE BOY Review

Could UK photographer Sam Taylor Wood possibly have chosen a bigger topic for her debut feature film?  Not content to simply ease into things - not by a long shot - Wood has instead chosen to start things off with a bio-pic dedicated to one of the largest and most mythologized figures in the history of pop culture. A bio-pic dedicated to the teen years of the young John Lennon - tracking the music icon from the day he first picks up a guitar through to the founding of The Beatles - Nowhere Boy succeeds, surprisingly enough, precisely because Wood keeps the focus away from the music. This is not a film about The Beatles, this is a film about John, a young man struggling to come to terms with a broken family and to find his own identity while pulled between the free spirited mother who abandoned him and the frosty aunt who raised him.

We meet John in his mid-teens, an obviously bright kid but completely disinterested student being raised by his free spirited Uncle George and emotionally rigid Aunt Mimi, played with fantastic reserve by a typically excellent Kristin Scott Thomas. Though Mimi may cluck with disapproval at some of John's antics, his uncle George is there to balance things out and John seems happy with his life despite the absence his own parents. And then things go horribly wrong. George dies suddenly, Mimi retreats into an emotionless shell, and John tracks down the mysterious red haired woman who appears at his uncle's funeral. It is his mother, Julia, and John's life is thrown into complete disarray when he realizes that not only is she alive and well but that she has been living only a short walk away without ever trying to contact him.

John and Julia forge a secret relationship, the boy learning a love of music from his talented mother and quickly beginning to see her as an escape from a home environment growing increasingly frosty and hostile. But all is not well with Julia, either. Early hints of emotional excess are confirmed by subsequent mood swings and breakdowns and it quickly becomes clear that Julia is Mimi's opposite in more ways than one, a raging mess of uncontrollable emotional extremes.

Though John's musical journey is certainly a key aspect of the film - The Quarrymen feature large as does his relationship with Paul McCartney - Nowhere Boy is not in any way, shape or form a movie about The Beatles. It features no Beatles music and ends just after that particular band has formed. No, this is the story of a boy struggling to make sense of a difficult life and family situation and become a man. And thanks to the keen eye of Wood and the universally strong performances - Aaron Johnson is very strong as Lennon and soon to become a household name thanks to lead roles in Kick-Ass and Hideo Nakata's Chatroom - it is a remarkably rich and resonant one. Existing fans will lap it up and it may just win a few new ones along the way.