As it turns out, there is much to be mined from Lennon’s troubled teenage years – he grows up fostered to Mimi Smith (Kristin Scott Thomas), a loving but very prim and proper aunt who hides from him the fact that his fun-loving but flaky mummy Julia (Anne-Marie Duff) lives a few streets away, rearing a family with another husband. This unhappy triangle between Lennon, his aunt, and mother plays out its dramatic potential over the course of the film.
This provides a stage for extremely strong and controlled performances from Kristin Scott Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff. Duff has been honoured with a British Independent Film Award, with the film pipped for several BAFTA nominations.
While providing a platform to understand the psyche of John Lennon, the film also succeeds in introducing us to the music he would have listened to, followed avidly, and played covers in the Quarrymen. The rock and rock and skiffle music of the era is very intoxicating, and we hear it from the jukeboxes, home receivers, and eventually the Quarrymen band that John Lennon sets up in the course of the film.
As a biopic, the focus is first and foremost on John Lennon, with Paul McCartney as a talented but bland second banana, while George Harrison gets a briefest mention. Don’t expect this to be a Beatles biopic; the film ends with the Beatles going off to Germany for their first engagement. As a Lennon biopic, though, this is as good as it gets for the 30th anniversary of his death.