One to One: John & Yoko
The Lennons left their 70 acre estate in Ascot for a two room loft in Greenwich Village in 1971 because Yoko was being treated horribly in the UK and because she wished to search for her daughter, Kyoko, who her second husband, Anthony Cox, had secured full custody of and disappeared with. They spent much of their time watching the television mounted at the end of their bed, but they also became fully fledged political activists and very equal partners. Director Kevin MacDonald ("Touching the Void," "The Last King of Scotland") and editor and co-director Sam Rice-Edwards ("Meet Me in the Bathroom") analyze the eighteen months the couple spent in that apartment in "One to One: John & Yoko."
Laura's Review: A-
There have been a spate of documentaries over the past few years on not only the Beatles, but John Lennon in particular, including "The Lost Weekend: A Love Story," about his relationship with May Pang, "Daytime Revolution" about his and Yoko's cohosting The Mike Douglas Show for a week and "John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial," about his last day and the investigation into his murder. While this latest overlaps a bit with "Daytime Revolution" and 2006's "The U.S. vs. John Lennon," MacDonald has found a unique approach to reflect Ono's influence on Lennon, the couple's evolution as activists and how times have changed little by incorporating snippets of the television news, entertainment and even ads John and Yoko would have been watching. The whole is also grounded editorially by the couple's music, from such well known classics as "Imagine" and "Instant Karma" to John's primal scream "Mother" and Yoko's "Don't Worry, Kyoko," from stunning, newly restored footage of John and Yoko’s only full-length concert, the One on One of the title, on August 30, 1972 at Madison Square Garden with The Plastic Ono Elephants Memory Band. A note of whimsy and amusement is added by a string of phone calls, represented visually with transcriptions against a plain dark background, of Yoko, their then assistant May Pang and others trying to secure hundreds of live flies - and keep them alive - for an art project. Later one of those telephone conversations will have a more chilling effect when a reporter asks John 'You're not frightened that this might lead to an assassination?' and he replies 'Don't worry, I don't aim to get shot. I'm an artist. I'm not a politician.'
After we hear John state that the television replaced the fireplace of his youth, we're treated to Richard Nixon telling a White House audience for a performance of the Ray Conniff singers that 'if the music's square, it's because I like it square!' only to have one of the singers openly protest the Vietnam War while he sat and took it. While we can only imagine the difference of the response were that to happen today, most of the other news items depressingly elicit a 'the more things change, the more they stay the same' response. And yet, when ordinary people push back, change for the good can happen, as we witness when John and Yoko agree to perform for the John Sinclair Freedom Rally concert. The man who was imprisoned for pot for ten years is freed two days later.
The film covers a lot of ground, from hearing Yoko diplomatically try to convince A.J. Weberman to stop harassing Bob Dylan so he would join their Free the People tour to raise political consciousness against Nixon's reelection, a tour that never happened when the Nixon administration tried to deport Lennon, to the couple's relationship with Jerry Rubin ('he should join the band and play speeches and the tambourine,' said Lennon), which changed when his protests at the Republican National Convention endangered people, going against Lennon's anti-violence stance. Lennon's reflections on being wiretapped and followed flow right into a news report of the Watergate break-in. Allen Ginsberg is another constant companion, seen here reading a poem about toilet paper and getting Walter Cronkite to repeat a meditational 'om.' (We can also meditate on just how awful dinner looks in an early 70's Ragu ad.)
We see Geraldo Rivera report on the children's ward of the Willowbrook state institution for the mentally disabled on the television in the Lennon's apartment meticulously recreated for this documentary. The piece so horrified the Lennons, especially Yoko as a grieving mother, that the put on the One to One concert raise 1.5 million for these kids. Yoko's influence is seen again when she gets Lennon to attend the first international feminist conference at Harvard University where she states she's been upgraded from being a 'bitch' to a 'witch,' a segue to the ensuing trip to Salem. We'll hear her sing 'Looking Over from My Hotel Window,' about the weight of 39 years of struggle and sorrow and missing her daughter, as we watch them taking personal time on the road.
The film is beautifully edited, Rice-Edwards gathering archival footage of John and Yoko, television footage, phone audio, the concert and that reconstructed set and not only grouping them into themes, but giving the couple's story an arc that eventually finds them moving to the Dakota and reveling in newfound parenthood. "One to One: John & Yoko" is the most in-depth look at the Lennons in a very equal partnership, their activism becoming more personally focused as the years go by.
Robin's Review: B+
In 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono performed a benefit concert for the mentally challenged children at the Willowbrook Institution. Directors Kevin MacDonald and Sam Rice-Edwards takes that concert’s footage and adds news reports of the time, a chronicle of world turmoil and copious interviews and images of the Lennons in Greenwich Village in “One-to-One: John & Yoko.”
Back on 30 August 1972, John and Yoko gave their concert to for the Willowbrook kids. It was actually two concerts held at Madison Square Garden that day, one during the afternoon and the other at night, and the only live concert Lennon gave between the Beatles in 1966 and his death by murder in 1980.
Directors Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards use concert footage from the 1972 documentary. “John Lennon and Yoko Ono Present the One-to-One Concert.” They take many portions from the concert and intersperse copious news footage from the time, TV commercials and snippets of television programs like the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Also included are the ’72 elections – Nixon won all states except, I am happy and proud to say, Massachusetts – including segregationist George Wallace and Shirley Chisholm (the first black candidate to run for president and who visited the paralyzed governor, from an assassination attempt, in the hospital). But, wait, there is more.
The filmmakers provide audio transcripts of phone calls between J&Y and journalists, manager and friends; transcripts of scouring NYC for flies for Yoko’s concept art; the Vietnam War, Bob Hope and Jane Fonda and protests in America; Billy Graham; a plane hijacking for ransom; planning a concert tour that would never happen; Beatle fan hate toward Yoko; FBI surveillance of J&Y and their threatened deportation; Mafia crime boss Joey Gallo’s murder; the Mike Douglas show; interviews with Dick Cavett and so forth.
So, if you are a fan of John and Yoko, a 1970’s history buff, documentary junkie or just like movies, “One-to-One” fills a lot of bills.
Magnolia opens "One to One: John & Yoko" exclusively in IMAX theaters on 4/11/25, expanding on 4/18/25.
