Film Review: Imagine: John Lennon – 6.5/10

‘Don’t confuse the songs with your own life...’

Musical documentaries are ten a penny at the moment. Documentaries about The Beatles, the greatest band of all time, have always been in high demand. Peter Jackson’s recent epic Get Back has reignited interest in the fab four, and so I took this opportunity to delve into some of the other Beatles docs on the market.

Traditionally, the music doc will take us through the life of the artist with a mixture of narration, talking heads (the device, not the band) and archive footage. Imagine dispenses with everything but the latter resulting in a montage of footage that tells Lennon’s story mostly through his own words. There are occasional interviews with family members and collaborators, but it is the footage of Lennon himself that really shines.

Director Andrew Solt focuses on Lennon’s post-Beatles career with occasional glimpses of the Beatles years, and while there is nothing here that Beatles enthusiasts won’t have seen before, it is affecting to have so much wonderful footage in once place. That being said, there is definitely scope for a definitive John Lennon documentary, and this absolutely isn’t it.

Imagine falls within two stools really. Not meaty enough for the obsessives and not in-depth enough for first timers, Imagine is an enjoyable stroll through the life of one of the most significant musicians of the 20th century without ever threatening to become either essential or ground-breaking.