I always was a little bit backwards…

Thursday night is fast becoming cinema night. I go on my own, and the staff are getting to know me, but tonight I bumped into my Dad’s business partner, his wife, and a woman who sails with him. It was nice to actually recognise someone rather than be recognised!

The film was Nowhere Boy which tells the tale of the teenage years of John Lennon. I came away with mixed feelings; my heart-strings had been played to satisfaction, but the film itself left me cold.

I didn’t think much of the central performances. Aaron Johnson’s Lennon lacked any subtlety. Brash and loutish ninety percent of the time, the ten percent of the performance which was meant to put this behaviour into the context of a boy dealing with losses he struggles to understand just left me cold. The McCartney character didn’t leave any impression at all. Clearly the director reveled in the “John meet Paul” moment;  from then on he just popped up whenever it was time to drive home the point that, look, there was this young kid called Paul and he could keep John in check better than anyone.

The heart of the movie was further stunted by the soundtrack, which to me felt far too polished for a “humble beginnings” story. It sounded right for recordings from the era, and to their credit the actors actually learned to sing any play their intruments. It just would have been nice to see them play live on camera, rather than miming along to pre-recorded tracks which were too perfect and ruining any sense of immersion for me.

Some have complained that the likenesses of the cast weren’t good enough. How can they believe in a Lennon with blue eyes? Others have claimed that they portray the mannerisms and voices of The Quarrymen perfectly. I don’t care either way, not being familiar enough with the source material to judge. I just know that I couldn’t believe in the characters they were playing.

Thank god, then, for Kristin Scott-Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff who played Lennon’s recently widowed aunt and apparently biploar mother respectively. They were the real stars of the film, and their stories were the ones to drag me in. Thomas stole every scene she was in with minimal animation. Playing Aunt Mimi – John’s guardian from the age of 5 who clearly struggled with expressing emotion – her dialogue was tight and her physical demeanor stiff. Nonetheless, her love for Lennon could never be doubted and the subtlest raising of the lips could melt my heart.

Anne-Marie Duff was just as convincing as Julia Lennon, portraying her manic episodes completely believably. It’s during one of these that John finds her, and the rest of the film is really about discovering how it came to be that she didn’t remain a part of his life and the mending of the myseterious rift that seems to exist between these two sisters. It’s beautifully done, and if the youngsters’ stories could have been scripted with the same finesse instead of throwing big “A-Ha!” moments in our faces all the time then I’m sure the cast could have risen to the challenge. As it stands, we’re left  with half a good film.