(2010) "I was just getting to know her," shortly after his 17th birthday John Lennon (Aaron Johnson) says to his bandmate Paul McCartney (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) about his mother Julia (Anne-Marie Duff) in director Sam Taylor-Wood's brooding biopic of Lennon in the years leading up to the Beatles (screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh based on half sister Julia née Dykins Baird's memoirs, John Lennon, My Brother and Imagine This - Growing Up with My Brother John Lennon).

On the opening chord of "A Hard Day's Night," the Beatles' song and title of the Fab Four's first film, Johnny's on the run. "You're going nowhere," predicts Mr Pobjoy, the school's headmaster. (How are teachers to distinguish the youthful hijinx of genius from the disruption of jerks?)

Since he was five, John has been raised by his Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Uncle George, who gave the boy his first "mouthie," a harmonica. Following George's death when John's 15, Mimi stoically says: "It's just the two of us, so let's get on with it."

After the funeral, where Julia makes a brief appearance, John, previously unaware of her propinquity in the neighborhood for many years, and his first cousin Stan Parkes walk to where she resides, unmarried, with Bobby Dykins (David Morrissey) and their two young daughters, Julia (seven years junior to John) and Jackie. "Don't tell Mimi," referring to her estranged sister, Julia requests of John after their day together of amusement in Blackpool: "This is our secret…. You're my dream!"

Unlike Mimi's preference for a staid household, taking in a serious college-student boarder, and classical music, the much wilder (though manic-depressive) Julia introduces John to Elvis Presley in a picture house and rock 'n' roll on the phonograph, teaching him to play banjo.

Suspended from school with Pete Shotton for possession of a nudie magazine, John begs Julia to allow him to spend his days with her; when Mimi ("without me you'd be in a children's home") finds out, he refuses to return to her guardianship. However, John overhears Bobby telling Julia that her son (sleeping in little Julia's bed) has to go ("Think of the girls").Moving back into Mimi's home - "She'll hurt you. You know that, don't you?" - sarcastic and conflicted, John (without glasses wearing his hair and sideburns like Elvis or putting on his glasses like Buddy Holly) plays the guitar Mimi bought him and forms the Quarrymen, a skiffle band with Liverpool lads Pete, Eric Griffiths, Len Garry, and Colin Hanton, a drummer with his own kit.

Another friend and sometime member of the band Ivan Vaughn introduces John to Paul McCartney (whose mother had died the previous year), who teaches John new songs and suggests they compose their own material, later bringing along schoolmate 14-year-old George Harrison.

During a birthday party Julia throws for him, John angrily confronts his mother: "Where's Daddy?" In a dramatic clash, Mimi contends with Julia, telling John the full story of the way, given a choice between his parents, in which he was abandoned: "And that is when I stole you."

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Copyright © 2011 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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