10) NOWHERE BOY

Director: Sam Taylor-Wood
Stars: Aaron Johnson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Anne-Marie Duff, Thomas Brodie Sangster, Sam Bell, David Threlfall
Year: 2009
Rating: R

A moving, sensitive and wholly real biography of a young John Lennon - played to star-making perfection by Aaron Johnson, who MUST be destined for a brilliant career if there is any justice in this world - Nowhere Boy tells the story of the early years of a young Lennon as he first learns to discover music ... at the hands of a mother he never really knew.

The film starts in Liverpool, where a fifteen-year-old John lives with his Uncle David (David Threlfall), a man he gets along with famously, seeing him as a father figure ... and Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas), a stern and seemingly unhappy woman who couldn't smile if her life depended on it. Early in the film, John is devastated by the loss of his uncle, due to a heart attack, and this loss prompts him to inquire more into the whereabouts of his real mother - something Mimi won't divulge.

Which makes it more of a shock when the rebellious Lennon learns, through a friend who has found her, that for nearly all his life his mother has been living within walking distance from his home. Finally working up the courage to knock on her door one day, John find a vibrant, exuberant, and beautiful redhead named Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), who embraces the fact that her son has come to see her at last ... even as she begs John to never, EVER allow Mimi to know they've spoken.

Thus begins a clandestine relationship between natural mother and son. John meets his two young stepsister, and Julia's husband - who is the only one who seems less than thrilled about John's reappearance - and the young, flighty Julia starts hanging out more and more with her teenage boy ... and, in a small eatery one sunny afternoon, introduces young John to rock and roll via a jukebox.

Lennon's obsession with Elvis Presley grows fast; he even styles his hair like the King, and decides he wants to play music; maybe even start his own band. Julia teaches him to play the banjo, and during this time perhaps the best exchange of dialogue comes into play in the film, when John asks his mother, "Why couldn't God make me Elvis?" ... and Julia replies, with a smile, "'Cause he was saving you for John Lennon."

The film touches on the man John Lennon would become, in light of his growing up - but the real story of this film is about Lennon the young man, and the relationship he had with the two most important and influential women in his life: his mother Julia, and his Aunt Mimi. Both relationships were complex, and deeply important to Lennon growing up; indeed, his mother and their relationship would be reflected in his music for years to come. The film also chronicles beginnings of the band John Lennon would form, and his meeting of a terrific young musician named Paul, and another guy named George that Paul would bring into the band that would later become the Beatles.

The look, feel and performances in the film - in particular by Johnson and the two ladies, all of whom turn in Oscar-worthy work here - completely invoke the 1950's and a complex dreamer and rebel who, at heart, just wanted to love and be loved ... and to make music. Nowhere Boy is a touching portrait of a young man determined to pursue his dream, whether that be to make music, or to find his place in the world; a film made all the more poignant knowing how, in the end, Lennon's story would end. ****1/2 - Reel Awesome-Reel Must-See