Nowhere Boy (2009)

Good morning!

It’s Lu again, how nice to see you. Hope that you’ll have a bright beautiful day ahead of you.

Do you know what makes me more procrastinating than others? It is that I am an idealist, or at least I try to be one. Everything must be perfect, everything must be right at the first time, and to do so, I need more time to prepare, more time to finish one task with double or triple time than a normal person. Why do I mention this? It is because it’s not easy to express my opinions a movie that I have watched years ago, and I can’t allow myself to write a shallow, irresponsibility review. I would love to write about “Schindler’s List” but that would require 3 hours to watch that movie again and that’s the time that I don’t have, at least right now. “Schindler’s List” will be a promise from me to you.

Instead, today’s review is about “Nowhere Boy”, a movie released in 2009. “Nowhere Boy” tells about John Lennon in his young age, before the Beatles were created, before John became famous. A movie that has an important position in my heart. In this review, I’ll try my best not to spoil any major details so for whom who haven’t watched the movie could enjoy it later with fresh experience.

How do you picture John Lennon in his adolescence? Even if you’ve already read about him, you can’t imagine how impulsive, reckless, arrogant, troubled he was, at least that is how John appears in the movie. A brilliant young man in his strongest age but deep inside he is a confused, hurt boy and lack of love from parents. Piece by piece, the viewers discover more and more what makes John Lennon a John Lennon that the world knows and remembers.

The color of the movie is warm, retro and nostalgic. The costumes amazingly describe the 50’s, the time when Elvis Presley was ruling the world with his enchanted talent.

John: Why couldn’t God make me Elvis?

Julia (his mother): ‘Cause he was saving you for John Lennon!

This certainly one of my favorite quotes in this movie, every one of us was born equally and only God knows what plan he has for us.

My ordinary and characterless writing can’t describe how valued his mom and his aunt to John Lennon’s life. If it wasn’t because of aunt Mimi, John would end up somewhere in New Zealand and if it wasn’t because of Julia his mother, John would never know about Rock’n’Roll and that would be the end of a story before its beginning. Why is that? I’ll let the movie answer this question.

Also in the movie you could experience how innocent and beautiful the music was back in the day. No auto-tuned, no sexual content, no fancy music video, no record company pushes you how many songs you need write, or tells you what to do, only PURE music from the hearts, from the souls of an artist. My opinion, using your creativity to write song is good but useless if you don’t put your heart into it.

All in all, Aaron Johnson has played very good to describe the teenager John Lennon and the director Sam Taylor-Johnson has cleverly wrapped up all the major events in John’s adolescence in 98 minutes. It’s never been easy to make a movie about a great human being such as John Lennon.

If you love the Beatles or John Lennon or simply a person who enjoys Rock’n’Roll, this movie won’t let you down, I give you my words.

To finish this, I will have a soundtrack for you, a sweet way for a boy to say “I love you” to his crush, there you go: https://youtu.be/94j7IjL7Eo0

-MiloufromSaigon-

Honestly, I don’t feel good about this review at all, so many ideas, so little vocabulary to express and also, I had no idea how to put them into a more logical order. Please forgive me.