SmackCrumpleBang!

Just back in from the icy wasteland that currently masquerades as London, have reburied myself in the many layered wondrousness of my bed – cor blimey guvnor its brass monkeys out there.  This would be fine (I could pretend I was in St Petersburg and play out russian spy fantasies) but there is no snow presently in my grimy corner of SE5 and therefore this bitter cold is completely unnecessary.  I have half a mind to write a strongly worded letter to whoever is responsible – at the moment this is you Mr Michael Fish.

Narrowly avoiding frostbite, I have had a lovely evening out with my doppelganger Timothy.  We started at covent garden Pizza Express (there is a nifty half price voucher doing the rounds at the moment – yum).  In a vague effort to *eat sensibly* I had one of those curious pizzas-with-a-hole which are meant to be virtuous by dint of hole and the salad they dump to fill aforementioned pizza-less space  (what do they do with the holes?)  With the money we saved buying half price pizza we indulged in a stunningly effective bottle of vino rouge and then tottered off to the pictures.

The film we went to see was Nowhere Boy - the feature length debut of the artist Sam Taylor-Wood.  When I was a wee student I used to idolise Ms. TW and indeed once got stuck on a staircase in the White Cube gallery with her (alas I was overcome in her presence and in trying to bolt I ended up even more stuck and made a pathetic squeaking sound – we didn’t speak and I made a tit out of myself).

There are some interesting points about this film, I shall list them:

1) It is about John Lennons teenage years – as he started the band which would later become the Beatles, but before they went ‘a la Hamburg’ for their formative musical journey.  This is not a period I previously realised would make a very interesting film.

2) The leading man is a very pretty 19 year old (Aaron Johnson) who Ms. TW is now ‘In flagrante delicto’ with… indeed she is expecting his offspring (to be honest, I defy anyone – man or woman – who watches this film not to want to carry his unborn child, he is very easy on the eye).

3) It has a stellar cast – Anne Marie Duff, Kristin Scott Thomas and a short but very sweet appearance by the enigmatic David Threlfall (who pays Frank Gallagher in Shameless so superbly).  Also it features that strange looking boy from Love Actually – who is now adult sized, but appears not to have grown but to have stretched.

What immediately strikes you as you start watching this film is that it has been made by a video artist, which isn’t a negative – I would say it was a definite plus.  The director may be shooting a feature length film, but has no fear of focusing on minutiae – cables, wallpaper, fish & chips, and a great many beautiful shots of the sun glinting off sea swells in Blackpool.  This approach makes for a slow paced first half, but gives the subject a richness which is surprisingly engaging, you forget you are watching A BIOPIC ABOUT THE EARLY LIFE OF JOHN LENNON and it becomes a tight, engaging drama which is refreshingly devoid of unnecessary embroidery and far closer to a piece of theatre.

The real life love that Ms TW discovered for her leading man is obvious in almost every shot he is in – as a result we see a character who less Mr Lennon and far more her beautiful muse.  We linger constantly on the way he moves, he smokes, he talks and he blinks – we sit on the ceiling above his bed looking down at him and we come back and back and back to his (quite lovely) eyes.

Kristen Scott Thomas and Anne Marie Duff are outstanding throughout.  Mixed together the elements of the cast, the unusual filming style, Ms TWs burning love for Mr Johnson and a hyper-tangible attention to detail make a very compelling and highly watchable film.

Neatly stepping over typical biopic sycophancy and fetishistic period drudgery, here is a film that quite unexpectedly becomes something quietly elegant. Tres bon Ms. TW and congratulations on the lennon-based bundle of joy.