Nowhere Boy
Director: Sam Taylor-Wood
If the pre-publicity is to be believed, Nowhere Boy, the feature directorial debut of artist Sam Taylor-Wood, was a hit even before a paying audience had a chance to see it. This is entirely possible, due to the practice of pre-selling the distribution rights in various markets. Nevertheless, the UK Film Council is so pleased with the film that it proposes to back further efforts directed by other noted practitioners of “Brit Art”, such as Jake and Dinos Chapman. Whether this results in Damien Hirst being commissioned to make a movie of Ewan McGregor immersed in formaldehyde remains to be seen, but to me this is a retrograde step. Why not simply bring back the British Film Institute as a production arm? It produced films by visual artists such as Derek Jarman and Isaac Julien in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. But this is another illustration of depressing cyclical trends in British movie making.
Nowhere Boy actually belongs to another cycle of British movies – those that focus on tortured pop stars. The focus here is the adolescent John Lennon, already the subject of The Hours and the Times and Backbeat, as well as the recent The Killing of John Lennon. You could be forgiven for feeling Lennon-ed out. Still, Nowhere Boy offers an unusual love triangle – a 17-year-old torn between his mother (Anne-Marie Duff) and his aunt Mimi (Kristen Scott-Thomas).
I tried very hard to sympathise with young, cocky and rebellious Liverpudlian John (Aaron Johnson) as he learns at the funeral of his uncle that his biological mother lives very close to him. He becomes obsessed with her in an almost Freudian way, drawn in by her exaggerated warmth and young-at-heart love of pop music. After being excluded from school for having a pornographic magazine, he spends more time with her, learning to play the banjo. He forms his first group, plays his first gig and is introduced to the young Paul McCartney (Thomas Sangster).
Actually, I was repelled by Lennon’s arrogance. He treats his mother abominably at his 18th birthday party, as he comes to terms with the reasons she abandoned him. There is reconciliation, then a shocking twist familiar to all Beatles maniacs.
Inevitably, we sympathise more with the two women, especially Aunt Mimi, who buys John his first guitar, but is prepared to take it away from him when his grades start to suffer. That John overcomes this setback by getting the money from his mother so that he can make a gig only increased my dislike of him.
Can Taylor-Wood and other British artists reinvigorate British cinema? Not on this evidence. Nowhere Boy is social realism, indistinguishable from the average BBC drama. It feels in many respects like a nothing movie, albeit one with strong performances from Duff and Scott-Thomas. l
Patrick Mulcahy
