1971. The Beatles are broken up, Richard Nixon is the president and employed the National Guard against students at Kent State University in the last summer, four died. The Vietnam War continues. At a protest in Ithaca Prison, 40 people are shot by guards. Right-wing extremist presidential candidate George Wallace is shot at. John Lennon and Yoko Ono still live in a small New York apartment. “The Flower Power generation is over, but we can start again, right?” Yoko Ono said in an interview. On the phone, the CIA surveillance equipment is crackling. A planned tour to raise bail for prisoners falls through when the government threatens to deport Lennon and Ono. Instead, John and Yoko organize a benefit concert for children with cognitive disabilities in Central Park: ONE TO ONE. It would be the last full-length concert that John Lennon would ever play.

The film by Kevin McDonald (WHITNEY, THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND) is just as much a portrait of the zeitgeist of 1971 as about its protagonists. Editor Sam Rice-Edwards creates a dynamic montage made up of news snippets, TV ads, interviews, and concert footage. What’s astounding is that the film, which was co-produced by Sean Ono Lennon, doesn’t smooth over the contradictory characters of his parents. This film doesn’t include the whole story of Beatles inner competition. All that's said is that Lennon wanted Bob Dylan to join him on a prisoner benefit tour. Because one of the tour organizers had rummaged through Dylan's trash on camera to show what a commercial scoundrel Dylan had become, Dylan refused to perform with Lennon and instead played on George Harrison's "Concert for Bangladesh," which was long considered the second-bestselling concert album of all time after "Woodstock"... But the political context is perhaps more interesting.

Also in the film: telephone conversations between Yoko Ono and her assistants, including May Pang, with whom Lennon later experienced the years-long “Lost Weekend.” The good-for-nothings are tasked with procuring 100 flies for Ono's film FLY, but hurry. Unfortunately, flies die quickly. Where do the flies go? May Pang solves the problem: She procures flies and larvae, which first hatch before they have to explore Yoko Ono's body. Working for Yoko Ono wasn't all love and peace; she could act astonishingly authoritative toward her subordinates. At the concert, Yoko Ono’s numbers are more interesting than Lennon’s post-Beatles songs, apart from hits like “Instant Karma”, “Cold Turkey” and the inevitable “Imagine.“ Ono's music is more in line with the experimental Krautrock grooves of Can, Harmonia and Neu!, which paved a way for future electronic music, while Lennon kept himself afloat with traditional rock 'n 'roll covers and very simple protest songs.

Tom Dorow (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy