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Movie review: ONE TO ONE: JOHN AND YOKO
Aye IMAX!
WARNING: If you want to sing along, do so at home!
ONE TO ONE: JOHN AND YOKO (2024) Kevin Macdonald / Co-director: Sam Rice-Edwards / Cinematographer: David Katznelson (1.85:1) / Designer: Kevin Timon Hill / Editors: Sam Rice-Edwards & Bruna Manfredi / Music: John Lennon & Yoko Ono and The Plastic Ono Elephant’s Memory Band / Music Producer: Sean Lennon / Cast: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Allen Ginsburg, Jon “Bowser” Bauman, Bob Hope, and Irv Kupcinet / Distributor: Magnolia / Not Rated / Length: 100 mins.
“America's going through a dark period!”
“The country has never been more divided!”
“Power to the people!”
“Our job is to challenge the apathy in the youth of America!”
Sound familiar? Those youthful rallying cries from the bygone era of revolt and unrest that was Richard Nixon’s America may sound even more applicable in today’s tech-savvy times. The need for peaceful protest against an unjust war kicked off a counterculture, one captured to the smallest detail in Kevin Macdonald’s (The Last King of Scotland, State of Play, Black Sea) GOAT John Lennon documentary, One to One: John and Yoko.
For 18 months, John Lennon and Yoko Ono took up residence in a small apartment in Greenwich Village, where they hosted artists and political radicals and watched a lot of TV. (The telly replaced the living room fireplace of Lennon's childhood.) Part of the movie is set inside a replica of the Bank Street apartment, constructed specially for the project. It was a time when entertainers could really make a difference. Lennon led the charge to free John Sinclair, a man who, according to Jerry Rubin, “got 10 years in jail for smoking a flower.” J&Y agreed to attend a rally where they performed a song written in Sinclair’s honor. Two days after the concert, Sinclair was a free man.
It was during this period that J&Y watched a TV news special hosted by Geraldo Rivera that exposed the toxic living conditions at the state-run Willowbrook School for intellectually challenged children. The couple saw the children of Willowbrook as icons of all the suffering souls on Earth. They couldn’t not offer their help. Lennon and company put on a benefit, the footage of which gives the film its structure. Held on August 30, 1972 at Madison Square Garden, the fundraiser, billed as One to One, would be Lennon’s only full-length concert after leaving The Beatles.
Given John and Yoko's penchant for watching television in bed, it's not surprising that the film sometimes feels like a TV being operated by a fevered channel surfer with a hair-trigger remote. Fade-ins and outs are replaced by blips of snow-no-sound as the programming jumps about from one historical touchstone to another: clips from the real-life bank robbery that formed the basis for Dog Day Afternoon; the mob killing of Joey Gallo; attending the first international feminist conference; Alabama Governor and proud white American George Wallace, the man who came closest to being America’s first racist president. (Like a recent candidate, Wallace also survived a gunshot wound on the campaign trail.) Are you old enough to recall Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman ever to serve in Congress, paying a bedside visit to a recuperating Wallace? (He presumably ordered the nurse to boil everything she touched the moment Chisholm hit the trail.)
One of Lennon’s first memories of Washington Square was meeting David Peel, an audiophile's answer to Ed Wood, known for works of vinyl refinement such as Have a Marijuana and his seminal chart-topper, The Pope Smokes Dope. For years, Peel was a staple on the Howard Stern Show, where he was teased to no end about his so-called connection to J&Y. Imagine my shock when Peel not only showed up, but did so in a non-discriminatory manner. One of the docs biggest finds is a series of unearthed phone conversations — including one in which Yoko confined to Peel what it was like to be the woman who broke up The Beatles.
More than just a rock doc, One to One: John and Yoko, painstakingly encapsulates an era, while at the same time offering hope for today. If America can survive 'Nam and Nixon, so too will our current malaise pass.
“Wash your bottom with fresh water after depositing night soil on Earth...” I must go now and commit to memory an ode, penned by Allen Ginsburg and Yoko, that questions America’s need to kill trees in order to produce paper specifically designed to be “squeezably soft” when it touches one’s backside. ****
Here's something you might be interested in.
Movie review: ONE TO ONE: JOHN AND YOKO
Aye IMAX!
Movie review: ONE TO ONE: JOHN AND YOKO
Aye IMAX!
WARNING: If you want to sing along, do so at home!
ONE TO ONE: JOHN AND YOKO (2024) Kevin Macdonald / Co-director: Sam Rice-Edwards / Cinematographer: David Katznelson (1.85:1) / Designer: Kevin Timon Hill / Editors: Sam Rice-Edwards & Bruna Manfredi / Music: John Lennon & Yoko Ono and The Plastic Ono Elephant’s Memory Band / Music Producer: Sean Lennon / Cast: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Allen Ginsburg, Jon “Bowser” Bauman, Bob Hope, and Irv Kupcinet / Distributor: Magnolia / Not Rated / Length: 100 mins.
“America's going through a dark period!”
“The country has never been more divided!”
“Power to the people!”
“Our job is to challenge the apathy in the youth of America!”
Sound familiar? Those youthful rallying cries from the bygone era of revolt and unrest that was Richard Nixon’s America may sound even more applicable in today’s tech-savvy times. The need for peaceful protest against an unjust war kicked off a counterculture, one captured to the smallest detail in Kevin Macdonald’s (The Last King of Scotland, State of Play, Black Sea) GOAT John Lennon documentary, One to One: John and Yoko.
For 18 months, John Lennon and Yoko Ono took up residence in a small apartment in Greenwich Village, where they hosted artists and political radicals and watched a lot of TV. (The telly replaced the living room fireplace of Lennon's childhood.) Part of the movie is set inside a replica of the Bank Street apartment, constructed specially for the project. It was a time when entertainers could really make a difference. Lennon led the charge to free John Sinclair, a man who, according to Jerry Rubin, “got 10 years in jail for smoking a flower.” J&Y agreed to attend a rally where they performed a song written in Sinclair’s honor. Two days after the concert, Sinclair was a free man.
It was during this period that J&Y watched a TV news special hosted by Geraldo Rivera that exposed the toxic living conditions at the state-run Willowbrook School for intellectually challenged children. The couple saw the children of Willowbrook as icons of all the suffering souls on Earth. They couldn’t not offer their help. Lennon and company put on a benefit, the footage of which gives the film its structure. Held on August 30, 1972 at Madison Square Garden, the fundraiser, billed as One to One, would be Lennon’s only full-length concert after leaving The Beatles.
Given John and Yoko's penchant for watching television in bed, it's not surprising that the film sometimes feels like a TV being operated by a fevered channel surfer with a hair-trigger remote. Fade-ins and outs are replaced by blips of snow-no-sound as the programming jumps about from one historical touchstone to another: clips from the real-life bank robbery that formed the basis for Dog Day Afternoon; the mob killing of Joey Gallo; attending the first international feminist conference; Alabama Governor and proud white American George Wallace, the man who came closest to being America’s first racist president. (Like a recent candidate, Wallace also survived a gunshot wound on the campaign trail.) Are you old enough to recall Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman ever to serve in Congress, paying a bedside visit to a recuperating Wallace? (He presumably ordered the nurse to boil everything she touched the moment Chisholm hit the trail.)
One of Lennon’s first memories of Washington Square was meeting David Peel, an audiophile's answer to Ed Wood, known for works of vinyl refinement such as Have a Marijuana and his seminal chart-topper, The Pope Smokes Dope. For years, Peel was a staple on the Howard Stern Show, where he was teased to no end about his so-called connection to J&Y. Imagine my shock when Peel not only showed up, but did so in a non-discriminatory manner. One of the docs biggest finds is a series of unearthed phone conversations — including one in which Yoko confined to Peel what it was like to be the woman who broke up The Beatles.
More than just a rock doc, One to One: John and Yoko, painstakingly encapsulates an era, while at the same time offering hope for today. If America can survive 'Nam and Nixon, so too will our current malaise pass.
“Wash your bottom with fresh water after depositing night soil on Earth...” I must go now and commit to memory an ode, penned by Allen Ginsburg and Yoko, that questions America’s need to kill trees in order to produce paper specifically designed to be “squeezably soft” when it touches one’s backside. ****
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