One To One: John & Yoko: John Lennon’s life after the Beatles
Do we need another film about The Beatles? Hollywood certainly thinks so. Last week the cast
was revealed for a four-film series of biopics on the band, directed by Sam Mendes and
expected in 2028. As speculation builds towards those dramatic endeavours, director Kevin MacDonald (The Last King Of Scotland) shines a light on the later years of John Lennon in One To One: John & Yoko.
The film focuses on the period immediately after the breakup of The Beatles, when Lennon and Yoko Ono moved to New York to live in an apartment in Greenwich Village. Charting their time living there, from 1971-73, it follows the couple’s involvement in anti-Vietnam protests and opposition to the Nixon government, as well as their work raising awareness for imprisoned activists.
This collection of archive recordings is built around footage of the Lennon and Ono’s “One to One” benefit concert held at Madison Square Garden in August 1972 on behalf of children at the Willowbrook institution in Staten Island. One of a series of concerts, it would be one of the few times the legend performed live before his death in 1980.
An artistically unkempt series of phone calls, filmed interviews, and personal material is stitched together to give an idea of what this period was like for the pair. Enjoying the artistry of The Village and the figures they come into contact with, it paints an image of a man trying to work out what’s next after being in the biggest band in history. Mercifully the viewer is spared any Beatles history or talking head interviews, instead being immersed in the sights and sounds of the time.
Whether or not it tells you anything new about Lennon depends on your depth of knowledge. He comes across as you’d imagine, a vocal pacifist drawn in by different causes and individuals in the hope of making change. Seeing this timeless figure eating cereal or watching television (channel hopping is used as a narrative device) gives him a mortality that’s more engaging than playing the same interview quotes over and over.
Those here for the music will also get their fill. Stunningly polished footage captures the rawness of the concert, from the diversity of those in attendance to the festival nature of the performances. Hits like “Instant Karma! (We All Shine On),” “Imagine,” and “Come Together” sung in a new context are a delight and a credit to Lennon and Ono’s son Sean, who oversaw the remastering.
The most fascinating element of the film is hearing Ono in her own words deal with the fallout of being the most hated woman in music. She would become the byword for a band-ending relationships, and yet looking back this legacy seems to be built on little more than hard-broken fans and misogyny.
Lennon is very much the master of his own destiny, while Ono speaks to stunned a stunned reporter about how she has been made to feel, in her words, like “the ugly Jap who took your monument away from you”. For all the hundreds of hours dedicated to The Beatles’ story, her point of view is one that rarely gets given any airtime, and the film is never better than when piercing that perspective.
A fascinating scrapbook of a period, One To One: John & Yoko may not be the definitive story of the musicians’ lives, but it is a compelling portrait of people trying to build a new chapter for society and themselves.