We have lately seen a slew of intriguing motion pictures about John Lennon’s post-Beatles existence: The Misplaced Weekend: A Love Story, about Lennon’s temporary relationship together with his assistant Might Pang, and Kevin Macdonald’s glorious archive-clip-collage research One to One: John & Yoko. Now here’s a prolonged and self-consciously reverential movie, which is unfortunately the weakest of the group. It doesn’t fairly become familiar with the implications of its personal title (was Lennon on “borrowed time”, precisely, within the Nineteen Seventies?) and there’s an terrible lot of sizzling air from an terrible lot of speaking heads in its prolonged working time, a few of whom are regaling us with less-than-premium-quality anecdotes – usually simply beamingly recalling the pinch-me second they really met John Lennon and, wow, he mentioned hello they usually couldn’t imagine it.
The movie covers the entire interval from Lennon’s arrival in New York proper via the last decade, the solo albums, quarrels with Paul, protests, interviews, joint ventures with Yoko, the wrestle to get a inexperienced card, the “misplaced weekend” with Pang, and at last his homicide on the time he was planning an bold new international tour. Beatles-expert veterans like Ray Connolly and Philip Norman supply their reminiscences, together with broadcasters like Andy Peebles, Bob Harris and Tony Palmer – however, frankly, there aren’t any alpha-level surviving intimates of Lennon.
Clearly, there’s meals for thought right here, a good bit of wheat among the many chaff: I didn’t know that John Lennon did a particular live performance in New York with Tom Jones and Peter Sellers referred to as A Salute to Sir Lew Grade, which is the sort of element that will enchantment to Beatles obsessive Craig Brown. One interviewee had an overhead view of Lennon’s lifeless physique on the sidewalk from his condominium window and, believing {that a} picture can be in dangerous style, he as a substitute did an eerie on-the-spot portray of the grim scene – which the movie reveals. And it’s nonetheless a wierd second to see the TV information interview with Paul McCartney reacting on the time, clearly in shock, nervously chewing, showing to be informal and even callous. I believe Lennon himself may need been impatient with a number of the piety right here, however it’s all the time attention-grabbing and honest.
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