Watch Imagine: John Lennon For Free

Simply Perfect

Overrated

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Eight years after John Lennon's death, and seventeen years after John's most popular solo album "Imagine" came out, this documentary was released. It was 1988 and the shock of Lennon's murder was lessening, and then they released this. But this documentary wasn't made to make people feel sad, but instead, it showed John Lennon's life from his early days living with his aunt, to his days with the Beatles, to his radical solo work and life with Yoko Ono. John is put in neither a positive nor a negative light here, so you can make the decision yourself. Was John a nut case, or a genius, or both, or something completely different altogether? This documentary is full of old interviews, archive footage of the Beatles concerts, and along with that it has new interviews from Cynthia Lennon, Yoko Ono and Julian Lennon, among others. It shows John's time in the recording studio, and his life with Yoko and how much he loved her, and she loved him. It gives us interesting footage from his home too.The more interesting scenes in this film are one's that we wouldn't normally see. A bum was walking around in Lennon's flower garden, and John asks him why, and this man believes John is writing his music for this man. They end up inviting him in for some lunch. That was probably the best scene in the movie, and the one that described John's overall attitude throughout his life. He was writing for himself, and for his wife, but if any other person felt personally touched by his music, then his message was universal. As shown in this movie, it wasn't his goal to reach others, only himself.All of John and Yoko's more artistic moments are featured here too, including their bed in's, and their artistic ideas like covering themselves with a blanket so no one can see what they look like. During their bed-in, they invited over Al Capp, creator of the Lil Abner cartoon strips, and he tries his hardest to rip them to pieces, which is irritating, but yet again, one of the best scenes in the movie.This documentary has some really neat footage, and that's the stuff that makes this good. The 1988 interviews were interesting on giving insight, but the footage from Lennon's solo work prime in the early 70's is what shows what he was about, and is what makes this documentary.My rating: *** out of ****. 100 mins. Not rated, contains language and nudity.

The man was a walking heart and a noble soul and I miss him very much. But his spirit lives on and watching this film is a good way to celebrate him. His personal sacrifices in promoting the peace movement were tremendous. Despite the heartless (and subtle racism) of Yoko-bashers, watching this film will help Beatles fans, music experts, and any viewer come to understand their love, the arch of his life, and his untimely and unfortunate end. The music will make you cry with joy. Undoubtedly John Lennon's music is the best and most profoundly personal music, especially for grieving and spiritual rehabilitation, in music history. His lyrics are insightful and bold, with a humanist zeal that defies blind ideology and religious zealots in the name of rationality, introspection and peace. If only more people in positions of influence would listen to John today, maybe we'd be in a better global situation at the moment. Timeless. - David

IMAGINE: JOHN LENNON is a very personal and emotional scrapbook that takes us right into the mind and soul of the great artist who departed this world much to early. Largely comprised from hundreds of hours of Lennon interviews and personal home movies, this feature is narrated in John's own words, giving us a bird's eye view of his life and experiences before, during, and after The Beatles. It's a candid and close look at Lennon the musician, the husband, the father and, most significantly of all, the Man.The documentary begins in 1971 at Tittenhurst Park in England, where John and Yoko lived and were then working on John's great IMAGINE album in a studio adjoining their home. Through John's own memories we then go backward in time to his birth, his rise to fame with the Beatles, the breakup of the group, his key meeting with Yoko Ono, all the exploits of John and Yoko through the late sixties and seventies, Lennon's retirement to raise his son Sean in 1975, and ultimately his happy comeback into the limelight in late 1980, when he was tragically assassinated and the entire world came to a screeching hault for millions.For rabid Lennon fans there are very juicy segments included, such as John recording "How Do You Sleep" (his infamous swipe at Paul McCartney) with the assistance of George Harrison on slide guitar. We see the very candid and human sides of John from inside the glass of the recording studio as he swears at an engineer for not being able to send forward the proper pre-recorded verse of "Oh Yoko" so that Lennon can add his backing harmonies to it. A real treat is a lengthy segment from the 1969 "Bed-In" period where we get to see a visibly perturbed Lennon trying to maintain his peaceful stance while sparring with ultra-conservative artist Al Capp while the man continually attacks and insults John and Yoko right to their faces. Another key bit of business features Lennon storming into a newspaper office to confront a journalist who's just written a seething article denouncing the Lennons. A real gem of a clip concerns a scruffy hippie who's camped out at Lennon's garden overnight and tried to meet the famous ex-Beatle. With the cameras capturing their confrontation, John tries to explain to the far-out young man that he's just a regular guy who writes songs, some of which don't really mean anything special, and that he's only human. After this, John invites the hungry man into his home to give him breakfast.John Lennon's appeal to the true fan was that he was very honest about who he was and what he believed in, and we could always relate to him and feel he was as real a person as we were. This film manages to capture the essence of John and it's a job very well done by director Andrew Solt, who had to plow through hundreds of hours of material, most of which must have been indispensable, to try and form a definitive representation of Lennon's whole life. If there is a tiny flaw in the film at all, it may be because John's life was so extraordinary that it's virtually impossible to get it all together in such a short space of running time; there is a sense of everything being squeezed together rather quickly (especially the Beatle years), where several hours would probably have been more adequate!Yoko Ono has gotten such a bad rap over the decades, and that's a real shame, as it's so obvious through her own observations and actual on-film reactions here that she was as in love with John and as respectful of him as he was toward her. It should be understood and accepted that John wanted to be with Yoko and that she "saved him from a kind of death" (as he once said). It may be difficult for some to accept that Lennon drifted away from the idea of being "one of the boys" with the Beatles and getting married and devoting his life to his relationship with Yoko, but it's what made him feel happy and fulfilled. As John himself said in one of his very final interviews for PLAYBOY in 1980:LENNON: "Listen, if somebody's gonna impress me, whether it be a Maharishi or a Janov or a Yoko, there comes a point when the emperor has no clothes. Because I do stupid things, I've done stupid things. I am naive but I'm also not stupid. So there comes a point where I will see. And nobody can pull the wool that long. So for all you folks out there who think that I'm having the wool pulled over my eyes, well, that's an insult to me. Not that you think less of Yoko, because that's your problem; what I think of her is what counts! But if you think you know me or you have some part of me because of the music I've made, and then you think I'm being controlled like a dog on a leash because I do things with her, then screw you, brother or sister... you don't know what's happening. I'm not here for you. I'm here for me and her and now the baby. Anybody who claims to have some interest in me as an individual artist or even as part of the Beatles has absolutely misunderstood everything I ever said if they can't see why I'm with Yoko." ***1/2 out of ****

If you like the Beatles, you'll like this movie........even if you don't necessarily like the Beatles, there's a good chance you'll still enjoy this piece of historical film that affected the way the world thought during the 60's and 70's...........Watch it........it's a very good film with rare footage and excellent commentaries.