By Dave Shiflett (Bloomberg) – Being a Beatle bugged John Lennon almost as much as being the son of a wayward drunk. He had issues with his mother as well according to “Lennon Naked,” which airs on PBS Sunday night at 9 p.m. New York time, along with wife Cynthia and the bearded and babbling Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The only person that seems to have made him happy was Yoko Ono, which made him none too popular with almost everyone else in his life, including his band mates and a snarling mother-in-law. Few days in Lennon’s life were blissful, if this 90-minute drama is to be believed. Christopher Eccleston stars as the rock icon. He’s not quite a dead ringer – especially his sizable beak -- though with his Jesus hair and wire-rimmed glasses he’s close enough. The film opens with Lennon and manager Brian Epstein (Rory Kinnear) motoring to a hotel where they meet Lennon’s father, Freddie (Christopher Fairbank), who vamoosed when Lennon was six and hadn’t made contact in 17 years. He’s a booze hound with a fondness for scotch and, soon enough, a 19-year-old girl, the latter which impresses John, who sets the old man and his babe up in a house. Yet his bitterness toward his father rages throughout the film, which purports to be “based on real events.” Eccleston’s portrayal of a Lennon as a tormented product of a dissolved home is powerful. Though he would become one of the world’s predominant peace activists he is rarely at peace with himself. In a pivotal scene he tells his “primal scream” therapist of being forced to choose between his mother and his father during a tense seaside meeting. He initially chose dad, then ran to mom, who took him off and farmed him out to an aunt. The sense of abandonment haunted him ever after. Yet Yoko Ono (Naoko Mori) did bring some relief. For Lennon it was close to love at first site: He sees her sitting there in an art studio, decked out in her underwear. Soon enough, he sends for her and the rest is history. They get naked a few times in the film though not in a way to get anyone’s sap rising. In one bare-butted scene Yoko sports enough ballast to keep a medium-sized schooner aloft in a stiff wind. She’s also given to arcane musings, saying she’s “just thinking about acorns” and that “John and I want to change the world.” Yet she comes across as a sympathetic character, especially after losing a child and getting a perpetually cold shoulder from the other Beatles, who are not even close to dead ringers. Anyone looking for a Beatle recharge will find the film a bummer. Indeed, Lennon calls much of the Beatle’s music “bollocks” and sneeringly refers to the band as “the nation’s little pets.” There are funny scenes, including Lennon’s meet-up with his mother-in-law during his divorce proceedings. The old bat calls him “a lying little drug addict” and “a sex maniac, just like his mother.” Yet the real parallel is with his father, who had left him just as Lennon eventually left son Julian and moved to New York, where he was murdered in 1980. Though a symbol of personal and artistic freedom he comes across here as yet another man deeply and sadly ensnared by his past. Imagine that.
