Before the Beatles

On the whole, I'd say that I've disliked more "biopic" movies than I've liked, and yet every now and then I feel interested enough to check one out. So it was with last year's Nowhere Boy, a tale of John Lennon's adolescence before the Beatles came together and changed music history.

This movie shared the same flaws that most biopics have, and the reason why I tend to dislike them -- there isn't really anywhere for the story to go. In this case, however, the movie runs up against that problem in rather a different way. Typically, a biographical tale runs the spread of the subject's entire life, and can leave the audience a bit bored when it already knows all the most critical events. This movie avoids that problem by focusing on just on the teenage years, yet steps into another problem by electing to tell a story that doesn't quite have a full story structure. The "main dramatic question" of what young John will make of his life may be known to we the viewers, but isn't answered in the context of a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Indeed, the end feels very artificial, in that the storyteller decides to just stop more than it feels he reached a natural conclusion.

Despite the structural problems, though, the writing isn't all bad. The movie does manage to find a handful of moments that pack a fair emotional punch. Other times, you laugh at the wit, or identify with the sense of young rebellion. Only on a couple of occasions does it wink at you by trading on the Beatles future, and I think it's a better movie for not repeatedly going to that well.

But the greatest strength of the film is the acting. Aaron Johnson stars as John Lennon, and if you (like me) have only seen him otherwise in Kick-Ass, prepare to be surprised. He's nearly unrecognizable; in mannerisms, accent, personality, and even physical appearance, he's quite different in this film. He also manages to convey the "sense" of John Lennon without doing anything that feels like an impersonation.

Similarly strong is Thomas Brodie Sangster as Paul McCartney. I spent a bit of time wondering "where do I recognize him from?", but the quality of the performance soon made me forget about that particular conundrum. (The answer, by the way, is that he was the young stepson of Liam Neeson's character in Love Actually.) And a particular "hats off" here -- though he is right-handed himself, he learned to play guitar left-handed for the role.

The real meat of the tale is how John is caught between his aunt and mother. And those strong emotional scenes I mentioned earlier only really land because of the strength of the two women in those roles: Kristin Scott Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff. I'm not very familiar with other films featuring either of them, but they're perfectly cast here.

So in all, I'd call the movie likable, but far from perfect. I rate it a B-. I am uncertain, though, just who to recommend it to. Non-Beatles fans might have no interest in it; Beatles fans might be put off by what I'm sure are a few flights of fancy taken with the history. I suppose you're the "target audience" if you like good acting, because that's what drives the film.