In 1971, legendary rock artists and power couple John Lennon and Yoko Ono left their estate in London and moved to New York. For 18 months they lived in a small apartment in Greenwich Village, mixing with like-minded artists and political radicals while spending their leisure time… watching a lot of TV. They believed it perfectly exhibited what was happening on different fronts of the nation — from light family dramas to hard-hitting talk shows, from presidential campaigns to Black empowerment and feminist movements. Kevin MacDonald’s new documentary, One to One: John & Yoko, offers a more comprehensive interrogation than its title may suggest at face value, going beyond mere biographical portraiture of the artists or standard filmed concert and backstage pass footage of Lennon and Ono’s “One to One” concert at Madison Square Garden — the former’s only full-length live concert after leaving The Beatles, which was in support of Willowbrook State School hospital that ultimately helped to raise $1.5 million. Instead, One to One is a far more experimental and montage-oriented documentary, one that through rhythmic organization and a nuanced panoramic view delineates the unending cultural and socio-political turmoil of that specific chaotic era. It was a time of extreme polarization between Nixonian conservatism and radical, counter-culture activism, to the degree that it almost seemed as if any gray area was purged from public discourse: a very fine example of this that we hear in the film comes when the controversial Dylanologist A.J. Weberman harshly criticizes his idol by viewing him as a multi-millionaire reactionary.
One to One, then, in remaining faithful to the omnipresent spirit of the early ‘70s and holding a similar point of view as Lennon and Yoko’s artistic curiosity and social consciousness, takes the shape of a trippy, delirious, and fast-paced documentary — even occasionally bringing to mind Jonas Mekas’ impulsive and free filmmaking style — and delivers a viewing experience that mimics flipping through the historical landscape. Especially for those who, like the titular duo, may feel like strangers in a strange land of a new dawn, MacDonald’s precise vision and narrative strategies (with a big assist from the extraordinary editing of Sam-Rice Edwards), shape a very dialectical nature wherein various personal and public archival footage is put into confrontational juxtaposition and where sparring dialogues are constructed between differing images. This strategy means that One to One is always moving between contrasting poles: for example, a shot of former president Nixon dancing with his daughter at a wedding ceremony immediately cuts to the massacre and victims in Vietnam; or when images of an anti-war rally in New York City and young hippies gathered at Lennon and Yoko’s charity concert are followed by a kitsch Chevy commercial.
Which is to say, MacDonald isn’t shy to plainly articulate where his beliefs lie, and he finds explicit, strong resonances between the past and the present of the nation, as well as between the personal and the political. In this sense, the director takes the 18-month period in the life, romance, and artistic collaboration of John Lennon and Yoko Ono — supported by frequent musical intervals from their live performance — and forwards this duo as both ideal and imaginative paragons whose art, dedicated activism, and very existence were ever reminders of mankind’s voices, sufferings, loves, losses, and hopes. The fact that today we are no less in desperate need of such artists, ones who marry their massive platform with even grander conviction, doesn’t speak well to any progress of humanism. In a taped conversation presented in One to One, an interviewer asks the couple how they’d like to be remembered, and Yoko replies: “John and I lived, loved and died,” to which Lennon adds, “Ah, just as two lovers. You know…” It’s not hard, then, to appreciate MacDonald’s unconventional and energetic documentary as a kaleidoscopic portrait of life, love, peace, and music as seen in times of war, confusion, paranoia, and bigotry. For those for whom such trying times sound depressingly familiar, One to One just might be essential viewing.
DIRECTOR: Kevin Macdonald & Sam Rice-Edwards; DISTRIBUTOR: Magnolia Pictures; IN THEATERS: April 11; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 40 min.
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