This review was originally published during Venice 2024 Film Festival. “One to one: John and Yoko“Opens from Magnolia Pictures on IMAX screens on Friday, April 11, 2025.
Autumn 1971, John Lennon And Yoko Ono moved into an apartment on 105 Bank Street in the western village of Manhattan. It had been two years since Lennon told his Beatles bandmates that he wanted “a divorce”, and the recently married couple longed for a new start in America away from the oppressive shadow of the group he founded. At this point, Lennon and Ono’s life were completely intertwined – they were not only lovers, but also close creative collaborators whose artistry developed in Tandem. Her background in Avantgarde and the gallery world were mixed with their experience of pop music and celebrity until their work became inseparable from Persona. Together, they gathered a more focused political conscience as the Vietnam War continued unabated in the middle of an increasingly cracked, hostile social environment. They wanted to implement theory, to commit themselves to activist politics and what better place to do so than in the cultural hub of the Western world?
Kevin MacDonald’s archive documentary “One to one: John & Yoko“Chronic the 18 months when Lennon and Ono lived in their West Village apartment. However, the driving force for the film originates from the recently restored pictures of Lennon’s” One to One “benefit concert, which tried to raise money for Willowbrook State School, a hard-under-financed. was previously released for the public in a very compromised form.
The pictures from the concert, such as MacDonald Intersperses in the entire film, complete with Remastered Sund with the permission of Sean Ono Lennon, is remarkable. With the support of the mental rock music from the plastic Ono Elephant’s memorial band, Lennon lets focus and lively as he goes through songs from his solo editions, including “Power to the people” and “Imagine” and MacDonald especially highlights Ono’s material from the show as well, which, much like her played music.
But MacDonald makes the sharp choice not to rest his film on the innate power of the concert films. Instead, he uses it as a springboard to capture a small record of Lennon and Ono’s life, as well as a crucial point in American history, mainly through the TV lens – local news coverage, panel programs, game shows, sitcoms, ads, etc. It is a suitable framework given that Lennon, in landing in America, was specially occupied by America. In any case, he spent an unreasonable time watching TV in his bed, so MacDonald and his editor Sam Rice-Edwards (also credited as a co-director) to recreate this experience by sequencing much of the film as if an off-screen Lennon browses through channels in 1971 and ’72.
It is a compelling structural gambit, one that avoids talking main interviews with Lennon’s contemporary and, crucial, Sidesteps strained attempts to say something new about the man, an all-but-resistant task. When MacDonald undertakes the TV framework, he and Rice-Edwards create a captivating visual collage that compiles the relatively banal, such as Frosted Flakes advertising and the “price is right”, against pictures from Attica Prison Riot or George Wallace Assassination attempt, not to mention the unrendered coverage of the Viet. In between, we see Lennon and Ono take advantage of their celebrity in television interview to promote left -wing politics and highlight the efforts of activists such as Jerry Rubin and Allen Ginsberg. At its best, “one to a” ambitious task of pelling a time filled with socio -political tension, of which Lennon and Ono were smack in the middle, via a medley of TV bars.
“One to one,” Digresses, however, from this structure by integrating archive films from different rally as well as previously unreleased materials such as home videos and telephone calls recordings by Lennon and Ono talk to close employees. The phone calls are particularly revealing: You hear Ono vulnerably tell musician David Peel about the experience of becoming a victim of character assassinations from violations and the chauvinistic press; You hear Lennon insist that his performances in protests will not lead to an attempted murder. Lennon also explicitly confirms that he is recording his calls from self-preservation given that the FBI knocked on his phone because the Nixon administration considered him a subversive figure. (The phone calls are also a source of comic relief: We hear a series of calls made for Ono to delete the logistics to collect thousands of flies for a work of art.)
MacDonald’s movie does not require exactly a story; A scattered portrait of a scattered time feels like a suitable way to portray Lennon and Ono at the specific moment, and the archive and TV pictures speak volumes on their own. An average eventually occurs with Lennon and Ono who commit themselves and then finally retreats from confronting left -wing politics. While Lennon is happy to participate in events such as John Sinclair Freedom Rally And tries to organize a “free the people” tour that would unite the country’s youth against Nixon, he is eventually disillusioned by the more conflicting elements of his activist circle. When Rubin suggests for Lennon he plays a rally at RNC in 1972 in Miami, Lennon rejects that he quoted his discomfort with Rubin who plans to lead young people to a violent confrontation with the police.
“One to one” does not explicitly editorly on Lennon’s political conscience, but that means that the insanity of some prominent Yippier combined with his great celebrity, making him victims of a three-year deportation campaign for Nixon White House, led him to channel his social activism to more explicit peace. (Or maybe he just got tired of trying to convince aj weberman not to rifle through bob dylan’s trash to test he’s an agent of capitalism.) The one to one benefit participular stems from lennon and ono’s shared sensitivitis, which childs chili That ono carried from when her daughter, kyoko, was taken from her by her ex-house band amidst a nasty custody battle. Lennon and Ono’s search for Kyoko were an important reason why they moved to the states and Ono would only be reunited with her in 1998, almost 20 years after Lennon’s murder.
Ironically, it is MacDonald’s attempt to sprinkle different stories from the pictures that make the film feel more messy than it would otherwise. Only a thorough sense of design could generate something like “one to one”, but the film succeeds most when its editorial construction simulates the disorder in its depicted historical moments, both the events themselves and their transmission through the media. MacDonald clearly understands the feeling of overloading information, how entertainment collides with news and global violence competes with the last trivial moment, and when “one to one” encompasses that idea, it becomes a fruitful view of Lennon and Ono’s place in culture.
Unfortunately, the film eventually arises a desperate attempt at cohesion, whether it is by grafting a reductive linearity to political history or repeatedly revolving back to Lennon and Ono’s relationship, as if the audience would forget that that is why the film is in the first place. If there is someone who was humbled by and skeptical of celebrity, it was Lennon and Ono, who tried to convey to the world that they were not at the center of it despite their naming recognition. That is why there is a force that “one to one” places those who simply part of the cultural morass, especially because it is in productive tension with the need to constantly highlight them.
But the film’s many, respectable agenda muffles that strength. It’s Understandable That “One to One,” for Example, Strives to Corract The Sexist, Xenophobic Record with Regards to Ono’s Image as a Weird Homewrecker, or Underscores Lennon’s Enlightenment with Regards to Feminism in HismiSnism in His Misicy Detracts from a Strong Editorial Design That Approprialies Stresses Their Relationship To A Larger, More Complex World over themselves.
“One to one” contains a thorough, accurate recreation of Lennon and Onos Bank Street apartment, with the permission of Oscar-nominated production designer Tatiana MacDonald, Kevin’s wife. The short glimpses that we see from their apartment communicate a comfortable domesticity that embodies the all -encompassing love Lennon and Ono knew each other. As much as the film repeatedly celebrates their relationship – its unaffected honesty, their political influence, the beautiful and often foreign art they created – it cannot compete with the view of their cozy apartment. “All I want is the truth,” once sang Lennon; He knew it was much easier than you could ever imagine.
Rating: B+
“One to One: John and Yoko” premiered by 2024 Venice Film Festival. Magnolia Pictures releases the film 2025.
