Early on in One to One: John & Yoko, directed by Kevin Macdonald and co-director Sam Rice-Edwards, we hear audio of an interview given by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. It’s the early ‘70s, after The Beatles became the biggest band in the world, while their break-up is still fresh in everyone’s memory, and after Lennon and Ono had moved to Greenwich Village in New York City. During the interview, one caller replies that due to recent events, he sees John and Yoko as actual people. To the caller, this comes off as a revelation, that two icons of this time — icons who have only grown in the public’s estimation over time — could actually be the same as you or me.
Movies about The Beatles have become a dime a dozen in recent years, with Ron Howard’s The Beatles: Eight Days a Week, Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back, and Sam Mendes’ upcoming four separate biopics now in the works. And while many of these projects have focused on The Beatles’ grandiosity, scale, and importance, they rarely focus on The Beatles as actual people. Even less common is narrowing in on one of the most important — and most criticized — relationships within The Beatles: the love between John and Yoko. Macdonald and Rice-Edwards take us back to the 1970s to explore these two but also show that two of the most important figures in music history were just a pair of flawed individuals trying their best to use their position of power to make the world a better place.
What Is ‘One to One: John & Yoko’ About?
As One to One begins, we hear narration from Lennon about how he and Yoko often lay in front of the TV and watch it endlessly, saying that the TV has replaced the fireplace in modern culture — a window to the world. In order to present what this period of tumult in the world was like and John and Yoko’s place in it, Macdonald and Rice-Edwards almost put us into the television of the 1970s. We see strange commercials of the time, news blasts for moments like the Attica Prison riot, Vietnam, and Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign, interspersed with interviews from John and Yoko in various programs. Much of the video and audio footage utilized is from unseen personal archives that range from discussion of an upcoming tour that never happens, to Yoko’s assistant trying to collect hundreds of flies for a project.
But most striking is the footage of Lennon and Ono’s One to One Benefit Concert, the only full-length concert that Lennon put on after the breakup of The Beatles. Taking place in 1972 at Madison Square Garden, this concert is a lively, exciting performance through some of his most legendary hits, and includes guest stars like Allen Ginsberg and Stevie Wonder. Macdonald and Rice-Edwards could’ve easily just narrowed in on this incredible concert, but expanding their scope beyond this moment makes the concert mean so much more. Still, no one would complain if there was even more footage from this concert inserted into One to One.
‘One to One: John & Yoko’ Is Right to Make This Couple Out as Humans, Not as Icons
Yet, even though it’s clear that Macdonald and Rice-Edwards hold John and Yoko in high regard, One to One takes a cue from that aforementioned caller and does an excellent job of making these two look like “real people” for once. For John, he’s a guy attempting to get out of the shadow of The Beatles, using his music for a greater purpose, and doing the best he can to preach his simple but important ideas. Even more harrowing is the journey Yoko is on, as she has the stigma of being the “woman who broke up The Beatles,” but is actually a smart, talented artist in her own right. She knows she’s going to remain tied to John throughout history, but she still tries to make her own voice heard.
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Macdonald and Rice-Edwards also don’t mind showing the flaws of these two legends. Not all of their plans to make the world live as one completely work or even make sense. As we hear in one audio recording, John wants to tour and pay the bail of hundreds of people in jail at each stop. When the person he’s talking to mentions that most people aren’t in jail because of bail, John keeps powering forward on his ingenious idea, making the other person on the line relent. Yoko’s art has always been boundary-pushing, but as we see some of her projects from the time, they don’t always work as brilliantly as she might hope. Yes, John and Yoko are two of the 20th century’s most important artistic figures, but here, they’re also just two people in love in their early 30s, trying to figure out the next step of their lives.
This is why the concert at the center of One to One is so important, in that we see the good that this type of ambition and latching onto simple mantras like “come together,” and “give peace a chance” can do. After watching the documentary Willowbrook: The Last Disgrace, in which they show an unkempt hellhole of an institution for children with mental health issues, John and Yoko decide to do something about it. This leads to the One to One concert, but also the pair organizing a carnival for all these kids who need joy in their life, away from the terrifying, underfunded walls of their institution home. While John and Yoko are preaching worldwide change, we see how much of an impact their influence can have in doing good at a very basic level. You may say that they’re dreamers, but the One to One concert shows how their dreams could actually do some good in the world.
Macdonald and Rice-Edwards expertly show another side of two of the most recognizable people in history, and smartly put us in the period where their work meant the most. In an era where artists like Chappell Roan are discussing the public’s unnatural approach to celebrity and not treating these artists as actual people, One to One is an important reminder that even the world’s biggest celebrities are also just people doing the best they can.
One to One: John & Yoko comes to IMAX on April 11.
One to One: John & Yoko
‘One to One: John & Yoko’ wisely shows John Lennon and Yoko One as people rather than as infallible icons of the 20th century.
- Release Date
-
August 28, 2024
- Runtime
-
100 minutes
- Director
-
Kevin Macdonald
- Producers
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Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve Condie, Peter Worsley, David Joseph
- Directors Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards brilliantly put us into the mindset of the early ’70s.
- One to One doesn’t shy away from showing the flaws of John and Yoko in this period of their life.
- The footage from the One to One concert is something to behold.
- We could’ve absolutely used more concert footage.
- Sometimes the focus on the TV of the time can take up too much time that could’ve been used elsewhere.
- Release Date
-
August 28, 2024
- Runtime
-
100 minutes
- Director
-
Kevin Macdonald
