Nowhere Boy

It's a good job you don't have to be a Beatles fan to get what's going on in this biopic of John Lennon's early days, based on his half-sister's memoirs.

I say that because I've never got the fuss over the Beatles, and I'm not alone in that. So I dreaded a film soaked in Beatles references and trivia that was only going to make sense to the die-hard fans, whilst also angering half of them for not being loyal enough to the memory of the demi-god Lennon.

Thankfully, that's not the case. There are references to the Beatles, but they're not especially prominent. For example, a young Lennon cycles past a gate with a sign by it that identifies the fields on the other side as 'Strawberry Fields'. Okay, tick that 'early influence on the later music' box – but only if you happened to notice it because you weren't watching the cocky kid on the bike.

Instead of creating a sickening Beatles-fest, director Sam Taylor Wood focuses on a story about a boy growing up torn between his biological mother and the aunt who has raised him as her own. Yes, he's precocious, yes, he's cocky, but he's a teenage lad with the problems you could easily expect to face any lad of the early 1960s. The hint of coming greatness is left as just that – a hint.

Which is why Nowhere Boy is just as good as social commentary of the 1960s as a history of the early Beatles (back in their days as the Quarrymen, before they were allowed anywhere near the famous Cavern Club). Fun as it is to play 'spot the future Beatle' as more promising, fresh-faced lads join Lennon's band, that's not the point. It's a story about boys getting together and singing music. So absent is the Beatles music from the score – which features instead some undervalued, rousing hits of the late fifties and early sixties – that the arrival of the first of their tunes comes as a mild surprise.

Charisma seems to have been a large part of Lennon's appeal, something that Aaron Johnson has plenty of. While there's an awful lot of teen swaggering and surly scowls, Johnson captures the look and feel of a boy who knows that he's the object in a tug-of-love between two women. More, he's prepared to exploit that, playing up to it, knowing that he'll be alright because they both love him deep down. It's a slightly sickening display of ingratitude and unnecessary cruelty. Partially, it seems alright to blame that on teen angst – all teenage boys are like this a bit, right? - but there does seem a little too much of Lennon expecting some sort of concession or special treatment because of his mother's abandoning him.

Luckily he has Thomas Sangster alongside him, giving a measured, thoughtful and thoroughly endearing performance as a young Paul McCartney. In many ways, McCartney comes across as the stable, understanding heart of what would become the biggest (commercially, anyway) band the world had yet seen. He's demure and slight, but looks easily capable of shouldering his future knighthood.

There are strong performances too from Kristin Scott Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff as Lennon's aunt and mother respectively. Hard though it is to believe that they're sisters, they both provide a striking contrast as motherly roles for Lennon. Thomas is the epitome of middle-class respectability, refined and sensible, but heart-breaking when the ice melts a little. Duff, meanwhile, the exuberantly bubbly woman who couldn't keep her son lights up the screen as a woman far younger at heart than in body.


Nowhere Boy is a film that – helped by the quiet dedication and hard work of Sangster – goes a long way to confirming my belief that McCartney was by far the nicer man, while Lennon was – as Sangster's McCartney politely puts it – just a bit of 'a dick'. But at least it tries to explain why.