(2010) BBC/PBS-TV biopic of an angry, sarcastic John Lennon (Christopher Eccleston) during the years 1964 to 1971 in which the Beatles' leader asks, "Who am I?"

Accompanied by the band's manager Brian Epstein (Rory Kinnear), John briefly meets with his estranged, alcoholic father Freddie (Christopher Fairbank), who'd abandoned the six-year-old child and his mother Julia 17 years earlier. Abrupt and harshly antagonistic, Lennon says to Freddie of Brian: "He looks after me, which is more than you did."

Based on actual events, including black-and-white newsreel and archival footage of the Fab Four (the other three Beatles have minor roles), with screenwriter Robert Jones's creative interpretation, director Edmund Coulthard's relentlessly dark portrait lacks the sardonic humor I recall from John Lennon's press conferences.

In 1967 Epstein died in a hotel room. John invites his father to his Kenwood mansion, driven to the estate in a psychedelic Yellow Submarine Rolls Royce - about which Freddie exclaims its being bigger than hotels he's been in - but can't resist speaking critically of his dad: "You stupid sot." John's also rudely sarcastic toward his wife Cynthia (Claudie Blakley) and largely indifferent with his young son Julian.

After the Beatles returned from India and studying with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ("a mistake"), John became acquainted with Japanese artist Yoko Ono (Naoko Mori), seven years his senior. Confessing to Derek Taylor (Michael Colgan), press officer for the band, his sometimes feeling like Jesus Christ (during a press conference he'd famously say: "We're more popular than Jesus"), Taylor replies: "Isn't being John Lennon enough?"

In his home with Cynthia watching, John steps off the pool edge into the water and comes up quipping: "I can't walk on water." Soon after Cynthia (complaining of her husband's being "cruel and spiteful") walks out with Julian (for whom McCartney would later write the song, "Hey Jude"); liberated, John, making tapes filled with noise, takes up with Yoko ("John and I want to change the world").

Becoming with Yoko separate like an island apart from the Beatles, John has artistic differences with Derek as well as Paul (Andrew Scott), George (Jack Morgan), and Ringo (Craig Cheetham) over the White Album. In 1969 John returns his Member of the British Empire (MBE) medal by post to the Queen in protest over the UK's involvement in the Vietnam war and begins with Yoko their "Give Peace a Chance" movement.

Yoko suffers two miscarriages. When John's childhood pal and former bandmate in The Quarrymen Pete Shotton (Adrian Bower) upbraids Lennon, saying he's "wasting talent," John retorts: "Keep your little thoughts to yourself." To the Beatles he announces: "It's over … Us." In the media Paul, who first releases a solo album, is depicted as the one responsible for breaking up the band.

John begins primal-scream therapy: "What about me?" He shares a new song with Freddie (remarried with a new family): "Father, you left me, but I never left you/ I needed you but you didn't need me."

In 1971, feeling alienated by the British public, John and Yoko depart for New York City, where they expect to be better received and appreciated. "I don't believe in Beatles/ I just believe in me," John sings in "God," concluding: "the dream is over." For the couple's decade in Manhattan see the documentaries LennoNYC and The USA vs John Lennon.

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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