Nowhere Boy Blu-ray

The acclaim that greeted Sam Taylor-Wood's take on John Lennon's early life was considerable, and this welcome Blu-ray release is the perfect showcase for an intelligent and unusual film biopic. The focus is on John Lennon's teenage years and his introduction to music, from his tyro band The Quarrymen to his burgeoning relationship with Paul McCartney and George Harrison, the genesis of the Beatles. The stress is on Lennon's uncongenial Liverpool home life, with Aaron Johnson superlative as the young Lennon, and BAFTA nominated Best Supporting Actress performances from Kristin Scott Thomas as Aunt Mimi and Anne Marie Duff as Lennon's unconventional mother Julia. There is a sizable array of bonus features, including “Lennon's Liverpool” and “The Re-creation of the Quarrymen”.

Barry Forshaw on 18th May 2010
Author of 564 reviews

Artist Sam Taylor-Wood imagines a young John Lennon. With its close attention to detail and mood, her directorial debut is a strikingly assured work, says Mike McCahill.

No mere Beatles cash-in, but a highly sensitive, attuned piece of storytelling, artist Sam Taylor-Wood’s pre-Fab drama Nowhere Boy casts the teenage John Lennon as the centre point in a tangled true-life love triangle.

This Lennon (newcomer Aaron Johnson) is drifting towards delinquency under the roof of his adoptive Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott-Thomas) when his birth mum Julia (Anne-Marie Duff) reappears. As if this visibly unstable woman wasn’t enough for one ordinary schoolboy to manage, there’s a certain influential skiffle group that also requires assembling.

Aided by Control screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh’s sharp eye (and ear) for a telling musical backstory, Taylor- Wood here makes a very different form of debut to her BritArt contemporary Steve McQueen’s Hunger, but Nowhere Boy is scarcely less striking in its close attention to detail and mood, and she’s a persuasive director of actors. Johnson skilfully reveals Lennon’s deep-set emotional scarring, Duff is compellingly vulnerable in the dramatic scenes, while the ever-wonderful Scott-Thomas seizes upon a rare light-comic role as the disapproving older sister. Love it do.

Mike McCahill on 23rd March 2010
Author of 215 reviews