Film Review: Nowhere Boy (15)

THIS story about the early Liverpool years of John Lennon lacks one thing – any Beatles music. Artist turned film director Sam Taylor-Wood works from a script by Matt Greenhalgh, who wrote the acclaimed Joy Division film Control, that stops as the Beatles set sail for Hamburg.

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We all know what happened after that. You probably don’t know much about what came before, notably Lennon’s unusual upbringing in Fities Liverpool.

Aaron Johnson suggests the raw talent, wit and abrasiveness for which Lennon became known as one quarter of the most famous pop band in the world. The script offers some reasons for the way he turned out by concentrating on the 15-year-old’s unconventional upbringing.

He was raised by his strict Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas, as icy as usual but with a vague accent). He’s a rebel whose life changes when his uncle (David Threlfall) dies and someone at the funeral asks the teenage John if he’d like to meet his mother.

It turns out that Julia (Anne-Marie Duff) is living less than a mile away from his aunt’s house. He calls round and is greeted like the long lost son he is. She’s the one that introduces him to rock-n-roll which she equates to sex.

Julia begins his musical education, teaching him to play the banjo and buying him his first guitar. He forms a skiffle band, The Quarrymen, and we see them recruit a young chap called Paul McCartney (Thomas Brodie Sangster).

Taylor Wood has resisted making this a one-note grim and gritty Northern dramas, opting for a more nostalgic approach without becoming oversentimental. It gives a flavour of what the young Lennon was like as he was torn between two women – the restrictive aunt and the fun-loving mother.