A new documentary captivates its audience by exploring the bond between John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The piece, directed by Kevin Macdonald, focuses on the couple's year-long love affair with their newly adopted home, New York City. It offers an intimate glimpse into New York in 1972, beautifully captured through archival materials. Macdonald's work finely details the couple's life in their renovated Greenwich Village apartment and paints an evocative picture using inputs from personal and public archives.
Integral to this thoughtfully curated content is eager footage from the couple's August 1972 Willowbrook kids benefit concert, 'One to One'. It showcases their move to the apartment on Bank Street, their interactions with intellectuals, radical artists, and political activists. Their time in this city is marked by Lennon's vocal appreciation for New York, to a degree that is bittersweet, considering its role as the site of his murder in 1980.
The documentary beautifully portrays Lennon's stance as a revolutionary artist who was often aligned with cultural radicals and the anti-war left. It emphasizes his refusal to be confined by hard and fast ideologies.
Among other key figures was Jerry Rubin, the theatrical iconoclast and co-founder of the Yippies and the Chicago Seven. The couple's time in Manhattan was also marked by their relentless dedication to their respective art forms and their efforts to regain contact with Ono's first-born amid political turmoil and potential deportation threats.
Throughout their journey, the documentary intercuts various television broadcasts the couple might have consumed during that era. With a spotlight on various TV appearances and humorous discussions about sourcing flies for Ono's art projects, the documentary offers a captivating musicality that pulsates with life and irony.
Macdonald's work illuminates a generational shift through its kaleidoscopic but specific lens. Lennon, a leading figure of the post-war generation, is excited about embarking on a 'Free the People' project with Rubin that aimed to bail out prisoners who couldn't afford to pay the fees. However, he ultimately shifted his focus inward.
A poignant moment in the documentary is the inclusion of Shirley Chisholm's compassionate response to the shooting of George Wallace. It connects Lennon's expression of facing oneself with the compassion he had.
One of the documentary's highlights is Lennon's benefit concert for the children of Willowbrook, symbolic of all the pain on Earth, showing a visibly energized Lennon performing post-Beatles favorites.
Macdonald's documentary ends with a valuable query about the nature of apathy-fighting hope and activism, questioning whether we have lowered our ideals of peace and justice. In its reflection of the 1970s' ideals, it also offers encouragement for the future and prompts audiences to restart if necessary, quoting Lennon saying, "OK, so flower power didn't work. So what? We start again".
