LENNONYC By Michael Epstein

When you are done being the leader of a band like The Beatles and you are not even 30, what is left to do in order to keep having as intense a life as before?

Going to New York, of course.

“Who wants to live in Wales? New York is Rome! I want to live in Rome!” Lennon kept screaming into the microphones during his fight with the American Immigration office to be granted a permanent permit. John Lennon’s New York years coincided with the most troubled, but also happiest, period of his life. LENNONYC tells all about it, from the struggle to be able to stay in the US (engaging in an almost personal battle against Nixon, who thought of him as an extremist troublemaker and wanted him out of the country) to his unexpected, absurd death outside the Dakota Building.

The artistic and political evolution of John Lennon in the US is depicted vividly through the interviews, unedited studio recordings and music that permeates the whole film. But the documentary does not limit itself to being a biopic of the Liverpool lad turned refined, politically active artist in New York. Thanks to the presence of Yoko Ono, the real artificer of the film, LENNONYC becomes above all the intimate portrait of a father and husband, someone looking for some serenity on the verge of his 40s.

Indeed, it is Ono’s earnestness and willingness to open the private family archive, even during their period of separation, which is the most moving element of the film. In the year in which her husband was supposed to turn 70 - was it not for a lunatic - she shows how much affection and sympathy John Lennon still arouses around the world, telling the story of an artist who had just started being able to find peace as a man when he died.

By Marta Musso