Richard Crouse

SYNOPSIS: “One to One: John & Yoko,” a new documentary now playing on IMAX and in theatres, is a look at New York City in the early 1970s through the actions of two of its most famous residents, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

CAST: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Richard Nixon, Jerry Rubin, Alan Ginsberg, George McGovern. Co-directed by Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards.

REVIEW: “One to One: John & Yoko” isn’t a traditional documentary. There is plenty of archival footage, but no interviews or narration. Instead, it’s a feel. Through never-before-seen concert and news footage co-directors Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards create an immersive look at activism in the early 1970s, seen through the lens of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s political engagement.

Before John and Yoko moved to the Upper West Side of Manhattan and their famous address at The Dakota Building, they lived in a small two-room apartment at 105 Bank Street in Greenwich Village, rented from Joe Butler of the Lovin’ Spoonful. Tucked away on a cobblestone street, for eighteen months (until a home invasion prompted a move to the more secure Dakota), roughly 1971 to 1973, the apartment became a counterculture hub for musicians and anti-Vietnam War activists.

While Lennon and Ono were consorting with the likes of Yippie leader Jerry Rubin, Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale and “Howl” poet Allen Ginsberg, they also attracted the attention of FBI head J. Edgar Hoover and the Immigration and Naturalization Service who ordered the musician’s deportation based on alleged Communist ties.

It’s this tumultuous time that Macdonald and Rice-Edwards explore in a film that feels like flipping through the television channels of the day. It’s a style, Macdonald says, inspired by Lennon’s obsessive television watching in the tiny apartment. Lennon absorbed pop and political culture through TV and “One to One: John & Yoko” replicates the feeling of watching the tube with someone with an itchy finger on the remote.

Newly restored footage, with remastered audio overseen by Sean Ono Lennon, of Lennon’s only full-length, post-Beatles concert is intercut with talk show appearance, home movies and news accounts to create a sense of time and place.

Most revealing are phone calls recorded by John and Yoko. During their surveillance by the Feds the couple began recording all their phone calls just in case they needed them as evidence in a court case. The concert footage, which is spectacular, grabs the eye, but it is the phone calls that provide the most fodder for Berratle fans.

From the heartfelt—Yoko talking about the break-up of the Beatles—to the bizarre—there’s a lot of talk of collecting house flies for an art installation—to the political—Lennon floating an idea to raise bail money through ticket sales—and the personal—Lennon’s attempts to get Bob Dylan “garbologist” A.J. Weberman to stop sifting through the folk icon’s garbage—the calls provide a close-up-and-personal portrait of John and Yoko at that time.

“One To One: John & Yoko” captures the aura of a chaotic time for the couple, both personally and professionally, as the couple struggled to find their place in a complicated world. “OK, so flower power didn’t work,” Lennon says. “So what? We start again.”

Abstract in its presentation, but immersive in its effect, it’s a must for Beatle completists who will get a charge out of “new” versions of “Come Together,” “Instant Karma” and “Hound Dog,” while poli-sci students who just might see parallels between the unrest of the 1970s and today.