One to One: John & Yoko
Kevin Macdonald takes an adventurous look at Lennon and Ono’s life in New York in 1972.
Yoko Ono and John Lennon
Image courtesy of Dogwoof Releasing.
Kevin Macdonald's career is notable for the extent to which he is a director who switches back and forth between dramas and documentaries. His work in the latter category may still be most readily associated with a film he made over twenty years ago, Touching the Void, but his subsequent varied work in that field has already included three films about singers, Marley (2012), Whitney (2018) and for television Being Mick, a 2001 piece about Jagger. Now with Sam Rice-Edwards contributing as both co-director and editor he offers us this study of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in the eighteen months after they arrived in New York City in 1971. They soon rented a loft apartment at 105 Bank Street in the West Village and it was during this period that Lennon alongside Yoko Ono gave what would be his last solo concert at Madison Square Garden, a benefit to help the mentally challenged children in the Willowbrook State School. That concert billed as ‘One to One’ is central to this documentary although the film’s title also points to this being a celebration of John and Yoko as partners.
I have seen rave reviews indicating that Macdonald's documentary is a must-see and that certainly makes sense for anyone whose interest in Lennon and Ono is close to being a fixation. Not only does the film include substantial extracts from the concert in a first-class restoration but it gives us a remarkably intimate impression of their lives at this time. In particular it provides a very rounded view of John Lennon spotlighting his personality and his concerns at this period in his all-too-short life. Yoko Ono is also much around of course but is hardly foregrounded until late on when the film follows her to a feminist conference at Harvard. It is at this point too that John is heard describing her as the genius who changed him, a statement which links with earlier remarks about settling down in Bank Street with the aim of living in a simpler and more modest mode.
If I feel that the appeal of this film depends greatly on how captivated viewers already are by John and Yoko, that is because as music documentaries go this is a very odd one. Usually films of this kind dealing with the sphere of pop music are either biographical pieces or works devoted to recording a particular concert. Despite a few snatches of song in other locations, the music in One to One: John & Yoko does indeed draw mainly on the 1972 concert but it is spread throughout the film and, while much of the footage gains from viewing Lennon in close-up, not infrequently numbers also incorporate intercut visuals of other material. On occasion the link between them is strong enough for this to be a benefit (the war images from Vietnam that accompany ‘Instant Karma', the forceful ‘Hound Dog’ presented as a comment on President Nixon) but elsewhere the cutting is less welcome.
However, when the film moves away from the concert and seeks to capture the personal lives of John and Yoko in these months it proves difficult to do that effectively. There are, of course, clips from TV interviews featuring John and/or Yoko but otherwise comparatively little visual material exists that can be used directly to this end. The most personal elements consist of audio recordings of telephone conversations played for us to hear with the words also written up on the screen. At their best they do give one the feeling that we are indeed getting the inside story yet even so jumping around between these calls and the TV pieces available can make the film seem all bits and pieces.
Furthermore, as though realising that there is not enough here to hold together a full feature film, Macdonald has latched onto the fact that Lennon when a newcomer to the city declared that he was looking at television constantly. This becomes an excuse to fill the screen with a bombardment of TV clips intended to capture the feel of the era. This is admirably relevant when it offers material that connects with John and Yoko's political concerns, one early example being a brief clip about the Attica state prison riot. However, we also get advertisements and references to popular TV shows of the day and all of this goes on and on and seems all the longer because the extracts are so brief and therefore so many in number. We do get telling moments and not least when politicians are challenged and the young express disgust over the war in Vietnam because this now plays as surprisingly close to modern day responses by youngsters and others over Gaza. But far too often this emphasis on TV footage incorporates much that needed to be far more closely related to the actual concerns of John and Yoko without which it feels entirely out of place here.
Furthermore, it must surely feel odd to find the camera viewing the interior of the Bank Street loft looking exactly as it did then unless you already know that it was a carefully reconstructed set made for the film. The decision not only to include no interviews but to exclude any commentary at all means that one just has to take the material thrown at you as it comes. For Macdonald’s expansive emphasis on TV extracts to work meaningfully greater selectivity was certainly called for so that they would all appear relevant. Nevertheless, for many the value of the material that is truly centred on John and Yoko will be such that it will carry the film since, despite the errors of judgment, it does bring us really close to them.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring archive footage of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Jerry Rubin, Andy Warhol and The Plastic Ono Band with Elephant’s Memory.
Dir Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards, Pro Peter Worsley, Kevin Macdonald and Alice Webb, Ph David Katznelson, Ed Sam Rice-Edwards, Music John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Mercury Studios/Plan B/KM Films-Dogwoof Releasing.
100 mins. UK. 2024. UK and US Rel: 11 April 2025. Cert. 15.
