One to One takes a deep dive into a pivotal year in the relationship between The Beatles legend John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
PLOT: A year in the life of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, as they settle into a new life in New York City while associating with the anti-war movement and being targeted by the U.S. government.
REVIEW: If you’re a Beatle-maniac like me, the last couple of years have delivered a virtual treasure trove of new footage centered around the Fab Four. First, there was Peter Jackson’s mammoth effort, Get Back, then the re-release of the long-buried Let It Be documentary, Hulu’s recent Beatles ’64 (which happened to feature one of the late David Lynch’s last on-camera interviews – as he remembered seeing The Beatles in his youth), Paul McCartney’s One Hand Clapping and now One to One: John & Yoko.
While plenty of excellent documentaries have been made about Lennon (such as Imagine: John Lennon), directors Kevin McDonald and Sam Rice-Edwards take a particularly bold approach, focusing all of their attention on one year in Lennon and Yoko Ono’s life—1972—when they re-established themselves in a tiny apartment in New York City in an effort to escape the long shadow of The Beatles and the vitriol aimed at Ono in the UK.
During this pivotal year, Lennon and Ono immersed themselves in the counter-culture, becoming close with anti-war activists like Jerry Rubin while playing gigs centered around their advocacy. One important gig was One to One, the only full-length concert Lennon ever gave as a solo performer, with songs performed by him and Ono meticulously restored and peppered throughout the film.
However, much of the movie is based around two things: found footage and archival clips of what was on television in 1972, with Lennon and Ono admitting they spent almost all their free time watching TV, which they felt was their window into the soul of America. Much of the archival footage consists of news clips documenting Richard Nixon’s escalation of the war in Vietnam, but that wasn’t all they watched, with footage from sitcoms, junk TV shows, commercials and more.
It proves to make for an unconventional but enlightening look into what was going on in Lennon’s head in particular at this pivotal moment. One of the movie’s big gets is that they had access to hours of phone calls Lennon recorded. At the time, he was certain he was being wiretapped, so he got into the habit of recording his calls. Some of the calls are amusing, particularly his exchanges with his manager, Allen Klein, who seems anxious any time Lennon wants to do a benefit, but, to suck up to his client, immediately contradicts himself. There’s also an enlightening bit about Lennon trying to negotiate a detente between Bob Dylan and the disgruntled former head of his fan club, who’d been hassling the Dylan family for “selling out,” even taking a news crew to rifle through his garbage cans – which he found a kit for intravenous drug use. We also get Ono trying to get one of her associates to buy live flies she can use in an art installation. However, not all of the calls are amusing, with Lennon, in one bittersweet moment, acknowledging that his actions could one day result in his assassination.
To be sure, McDonald (who also directed superb documentaries about Whitney Houston and Bob Marley) and Rice-Edwards’s doc is not for the uninitiated. If you only know the basics of Lennon’s life and career, further research is warranted before digging into this. But, for his fans (and lord knows I’m one), this is another essential documentary about one of the defining talents of the twentieth century.
