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Released by: BBC/Warner
Released on: 11/23/2010
Director: Edmund Coulthard
Cast: Christopher Eccleston, Christopher Fairbank, Allan Corduner, Andrew Scott, Naoko Mori, Craig Cheetham
Year: 2010
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The Movie:
Directed by Edmund Coulthard, Lennon Naked stars Christopher Eccleston in the lead role of John Lennon as the film examines that period in the musician's life in the latter half of the sixties. When the movie begins, Lennon's manager, Brian Epstein (Rory Kinnear), is insistent that Lennon meet his father, Freddie Lennon (Christopher Fairbank). From there we cut into the future a bit and see John and his father getting to know one another before we move on to the end of John's marriage to Cynthia (Claudie Blakley) and into his relationship with a young artist named Yoko Ono (Naoko Mori). The rest of the movie follows his life in this fashion up until 1971.
Lennon had a reputation for not always being the most agreeable of men to work with and Lennon Naked seems to want to focus on that. Fair enough, that's definitely a part of the man's history and by all rights it should play a part in any serious look at his life and his work. Oddly enough, however, that's where this particular film spends almost all of its focus. This may have been an attempt to humanize a man who has been put on a pedestal by hundreds of thousands of people who see Lennon as a god of sorts, but it just really winds up making him look like a cranky dude.
Eccleston's take on Lennon isn't going to win any awards but he's definitely got a certain likeness to him and does manage to capture some of his mannerisms and speech patterns well enough. This is a tough role to nail and how effective Eccleston's work here will vary according to each viewer's familiarity with the real thing. Much like how Joaquin Phoenix's highly praised take on Johnny Cash left some Cash die-hards a bit perplexed, so too will Eccleston's take on Lennon leave some Beatles fanatics a bit cold, but he's certainly not bad here.
The movie fails to examine Lennon's issues any further than simply chalking them all up to his father's not being there in his younger days. It doesn't really examine his relationship with the other three Beatles during this time in his life and it doesn't offer up much in the way of his relationship with Cynthia before trudging face first into the Yoko years, which it understandably covers with a bit more detail. Granted, it's hard for an eighty-two minute movie to cover a life as large and influential as Lennon's with all but the most fleeting of substance, but Lennon Naked doesn't really seem to want to do much more than just make him look angry.
Those expecting a look into The Beatles' work in the late sixties won't get much out of this, as the focus is really on John and Freddie Lennon's unusual relationship and the effects that it had on the Beatle later in his life - an interesting part of the man's life, sure, but not handled with very much finesse in Lennon Naked. The end result is a rushed, drab, and rather dull piece of work that is, to the filmmaker's credit, reasonably well acted and nicely shot. Substance, however, is more important than style this time around.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is okay, though the interlacing can be distracting at times. Some shots look a bit on the soft side and some minor compression artifacts do show up in a few of the darker scenes but generally speaking we're left with a clean, clear, crisp image that shows reasonable detail and nice color reproduction.
The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track on this disc is fine for what it is, but it lacks the impact a 5.1 track could have given certain scenes. The music used in the picture sounds pretty good and the levels are well balanced - there are no problems here, really, it just doesn't leave much of an impression is all.
Aside from the menu and chapter selections, the disc is completely barebones.
The Final Word:
The BBC's DVD presentation of Lennon Naked looks okay and sounds alright but it's a barebones presentation of a mediocre film. Beatles collector's will probably have to have it but as far as bio-pics go, this one is pretty flat.