Director Kevin Macdonald navigates the channels of the early 1970s, taking us into the lives of John and Yoko—and the entire period—in a stunning way.
I've seen documentaries that reveal fascinating aspects of John Lennon: films like "The United States vs. John Lennon" (2006), which chronicles his political activism and the Nixon administration's attempts to deport him, or "The Lost Weekend: A Love Story" (2022), a portrait of Lennon's relationship with May Pang. But "One on One: John and Yoko," despite its rather bland title, may be the most accomplished and captivating of these highly angled Lennon profiles.
Directors: Kevin Macdonald, Sam Rice-Edwards
Stars: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Plastic Ono Band with Elephant's Memory
"The Lost Weekend" showed us a side of Lennon that had gone largely unnoticed (including his propensity for violence, which was never discussed much beyond Albert Goldman's scandalous and insightful biography, "The Lives of John Lennon"). “One to One” addresses the period just before Lost Weekend, beginning in August 1971, when John and Yoko moved from their estate outside London to New York, where they spent 18 months living in a small apartment in the West Village. (It was after that that they moved to the Dakota.)
Lennon was out and about, enjoying the city, appearing on American talk shows as “Mike Douglas,” relishing the relative tranquility of his post-Beatles life. And much of this has a familiar aura. But “One to One” was directed by the accomplished and sometimes audacious Scottish director Kevin Macdonald, whose films range from “Touching the Void” to “The Last King of Scotland” to “Whitney,” and it takes us into John Lennon’s life, and the entire period, in a breathtaking way.
The film begins with something Lennon openly mentioned, but which many of us heard in one ear and out the other: that after moving to New York and embracing the United States, he became a couch potato. I always found this rather amusing, given that Lennon, in the early 1970s, still maintained his countercultural credentials and was at the forefront of various protest movements. However, his admission that his favorite activity was unwinding in front of the television foreshadowed, beyond his most famous exploits, where the entire culture was headed.
Lennon might have been an idealist politically ("Nothing to kill or be killed for, and no religion..."), but in many ways he was a regal cynic, imbued with the anti-romanticism of his acidic view of reality. (Just listen to the lyrics of "Revolution.") And that's what the TV addiction of a certain kind of intelligent person is all about, and it certainly was back then: surfing through it all—the commercials, the programs that are mostly trash, the news packaged, in many ways, like an ad—to absorb it like a sponge and, at the same time, go with the flow, being subtly superior, complicit in the decadent Western couch potato act of experiencing everything under the sun as a program.
John and Yoko weren't couch potatoes; they were bed addicts. Macdonald and his team have erected a disturbingly accurate reconstruction of the couple's white-walled duplex apartment at 105 Bank St. We never see the apartment occupied, but as the camera pans around, we figure out where everything is: the bed, the TV at the foot, the scattered remnants of John and Yoko's lives (guitars, clothes, an amplifier, a typewriter, newspapers and magazines, a Snoopy pillowcase). "One on One" is filled with home movies and candid photographs, and with that mock-up apartment right in front of us, we can almost place the John and Yoko we see inside.
Macdonald frames the period in other key ways. "One to One" takes its title from a pair of benefit concerts Lennon performed at Madison Square Garden with the Plastic Ono Elephant's Memory Band on August 30, 1972. It would be his last full-length concert, and what's astonishing, looking back now, is the powerful momentum the music carries. The band sounded extraordinary, so crisp and alive, as Lennon led them through the songs, from the powerful opening number, "New York City," through "Instant Karma," "Come Together," and the stripped-down epiphany of the heartbreaking performance of "Mother."
The music gives the film shape and propulsion. But so does the way Macdonald, drawing on Lennon's television addiction, presents images of the era like a continuous zapping montage. We see Nixon, "The Waltons," the Attica State uprising, Jerry Rubin in "Phil Donahue," a Ragu ad, the assassination of George Wallace, Charlie Chaplin's return from exile, and other media events and anecdotes that hit you with their early 1970s feel.
We can understand why as we listen, startled, to John and Yoko's phone calls, several of which are presented, with transcripts set against a black background, in "One to One." By then, Lennon's phone was already being tapped by the FBI, and we can surmise that these tapes (the filmmakers, for the record, don't say so) belong to that set of surreptitiously recorded documents. But there's nothing outrageous at play.
We hear the comedy of Yoko's partner attempting to control a group of insects for one of her art installations. We hear Lennon preaching purist politics to Allen Klein, the manager who played a part in breaking up the Beatles, and Klein is too worldly to be swayed by Lennon's radical dreams, but too smart not to change his mind and suddenly pretend that, yes, he, too, can feel the spirit. (This is the very essence of management.) We hear Jerry Rubin's leftist, performative guilt-tripping. Mainly, we hear how jovial and open Lennon was, even with his lie detector.
We also hear how keen an observer Yoko was and how she felt excluded by the Beatles ("They ignored me"). Part of the film's emotional undertone lies in John's forward-thinking approach to putting Yoko's wishes before his own. The main reason they came to New York was to look for Kyoko, Yoko's daughter, from whom he had become estranged after his second marriage, and whom they never found (she was being raised, under a different identity, in a Christian sect). They moved into a modest bohemian apartment because that was Yoko's wish. (She came from a wealthy family, and their country mansion didn't seem as novel to her as it did to John, a working-class man.)
“One to One” chronicles Lennon’s close friendship with Elton John, though the film cheats a bit here, as all of this happened later, in 1973 and 1974, when their stirring hit duet, Lennon’s “Whatever Gets You Through the Night,” was released. But this isn’t a big deal, as very little about John Lennon was simple or consistent. In the early 1970s, he was a genuine contradiction: a radical who sat back and watched television; a powerful rock star who was dedicated to pleasing and honoring his avant-garde wife, even while clinging to his fussy rake; a die-hard Brit who became the quintessential New Yorker.
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