‘One to One: John & Yoko’ replays Lennon and Ono’s benefit show
John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged a benefit show for the children of Willowbrook in 1972, which is seen anew in “One to One: John & Yoko.”
In 1972, the FBI tapped John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s phone at the request of Richard Nixon, who worried Lennon might undermine his reelection bid. The paranoid president couldn’t have anticipated that the couple’s son would be thrilled to hear the captured conversations.
“Growing up without my father, most of my experience of him has been through videos and film and music,” Sean Ono Lennon says. “So I always feel like I’m gaining extra time with him. It was really great fun to hear the audio calls. It’s nice because it’s so candid and unfiltered.”
Those phone calls − some amusing, others goosebump-inducing − are at the center of the new documentary “One to One: John & Yoko” (exclusively in IMAX theaters Friday, in theaters everywhere April 18), which culminates in a benefit concert that would be Lennon’s only full-length post-Beatles show.
Sean Lennon − who has produced the music for a Record Store Day EP and a box set to mark Lennon’s 85th birthday on Oct. 9 − describes it as “an unmanicured window into their lives during a very tumultuous but also very creative time period.”
By the early ‘70s, “my parents had fused into a superorganism. Everything they did, they did together; all the songs they were writing were together. It was a team of two,” he says. “This film represents the reality of that moment in time very faithfully and accurately.”
“One to One,” directed by Kevin Macdonald, follows John and Yoko as they align with Jerry Rubin and other leaders of the radicalized left. Plans are hatched for the couple to head the all-star Free the People tour, with a final stop at the Republican National Convention. Ultimately, the two peaceniks grow uncomfortable with the potential for violence and call the whole thing off.
Instead, as John and Yoko lose hope for the movement, they decide to perform a pair of charity shows at Madison Square Garden, with proceeds providing individualized care for the disabled children of Willowbrook State School, whose heartbreaking plight was exposed by Geraldo Rivera.
“In a way, the film is about moving past political defeat to improve the world in small ways around you,” says Macdonald.
For Sean, the lesson is that “you lose the moral high ground when you become violent yourself. You see my parents realizing that some of the people who were supposed to be fighting for justice were turning into monsters themselves. … As soon as you try to make your point through violence, you’ve lost the argument.
“My parents were always very conscious of spreading messages of positive change and peace and love.”
Perhaps just as radically for the era, “One to One” depicts John Lennon completely committed to supporting his wife in her endeavors, including attending the First International Feminist Conference alongside her. One revelation that will surprise fans is that the couple’s move to America and John’s fight for his green card were almost entirely driven by their efforts to regain custody of Ono’s young daughter, Kyoko, after ex-husband Tony Cox fled with her.
“Imagine being a mother whose daughter has been kidnapped and you’re searching everywhere and you can’t find her and nobody seems to (care),” Macdonald says. “That moment where she sings ‘Don’t Worry Kyoko’ and screeching and writhing is one of the most amazing moments in the film actually, when you understand that’s about her pain at losing her daughter.
“This is a human tragedy that allows you an access to Yoko and her feelings that I don’t think people have been previously willing to take on board.”
Yoko and Kyoko reunited a decade and a half after Lennon’s murder. “Like me, (Kyoko) was exposed to the limelight and celebrity culture when she was very young, and she had a very hard time,” Sean says. “I love her very much, and I’m just grateful that life has made it such that we’re able to spend these years together, because we didn’t get to when I was a kid.”
Amid an era of eerily parallel political upheaval, Ono, now 92, lives a quiet retirement. (“I’m trying my best to take care of her,” Sean says. “She’s doing well, considering her age.”)
Would Lennon be doing the same, if he were alive?
“John was nothing if not progressive, and I think he would have made his opinions clear about authoritarianism around the world and the move to the right in America,” Macdonald says. “He would have been outspoken, he was always brave. … Sometimes it comes across as naivete, but there’s an enthusiasm for improving himself that’s endearing.”
For Sean’s part, “I’ve spent most of my life trying to avoid speaking for him. But I do believe that one thing that was consistent about my dad intellectually and artistically, he was never the same from one year to the next. His mind was always evolving, he was always discovering new ideas and inspiration.
“Whatever you think John Lennon would think today is probably not it. He was always changing his mind. He would probably surprise you because he always surprised everybody.”
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