Nowhere Boy

Over the past weekend, I watched Nowhere Boy, a biopic about John Lennon's early years.

Biopics have a reputation of blowing historical events out of proportion, making things up, or drawing narrative where none exist. 

Nowhere Boy, however, seems as faithful to reality as a biopic could ever be, and I think we have Lennon propensity for rebellion and drama to thank for that.

It seemed an incredibly short film in a variety of ways. In the sense that very little actually happens plot-wise (which is unsurprising for a biopic), and it takes place before anything "big" happens to John in terms of the story of John Lennon we all know. The film is uncannily accurate to reality, and I would even say that the film suffers slightly as a piece of entertainment because of that.

But that isn't to say that nothing happened; in fact, perhaps the most critical things to Lennon's career happened during the setting of this film. He started learning playing music, met Paul McCartney, and the most profound events, and the focus of this film, was John Lennon's reconnection with and the death of his mother, Julia Lennon. The Early Years section of John Lennon's Wikipedia article could almost be read as a play-by-play of everything in this film.

Now, I knew the general events that took place here, only because I've seen a different Early-John-Lennon-years biopic in the past. And from research, I can tell that mostly all of the important things in it did actually happen. Paul McCartney actually had an interview after he watched the film, and he loved it, only saying that John never actually punched him in the face like he did in the film. And it still  served the scene to great effect even if didn't actually happen, because it very well could have happened. One Critic concluded that there were "very little nits for picking." 

And I fall in line with that assessment as well, the only things that the film added were small things that were added to individual scenes, and they sometimes summed up facts of John's life by using carefully constructed scenes. None of the important events are ever subjugated by the film's liberties.

(Ok the dream sequences were probably pretty liberal for the writers of this film, but the nonsensical and interpretable nature of dreams makes that utterly irrelevant in terms of historical accuracy.)

From what I can see, John Lennon led a pretty dramatic life, both in his early years and beyond. If the film anything anything, it was merely rearrangements and a few small things for dramatic flair.  This leaves a film that somehow manages to be both accurate and impactful.