Beatles Saga ‘In His Life’ Plows Some New Ground

The best Beatles movies--including the ones the Beatles were in--have captured moments in time for the Fab Four. “Backbeat” looked at the pre-fame days in Hamburg, Germany, during which they transformed from roughnecks to (literally) the Mop Tops. “The Hours and Times” speculated about a brief holiday John Lennon and manager Brian Epstein took in Spain during the height of English madness for the group. And of course “A Hard Day’s Night” showed us the personal sides of the lads in an only slightly fictionalized setting of Beatlemania at its most manic.

And the most effective insights into Lennon’s life have come through examinations of his relationships--with Paul McCartney, Epstein and Yoko Ono having gotten the bulk of attention.

With believable dialogue and great feel for detail from writer-producer Mark O’Hara, NBC’s “In His Life: The John Lennon Story” (airing Sunday at 9 p.m.) scores on both counts, and manages to do it with a period of his life and a key relationship that have not been over-examined--if only for the first third of the movie.

The film covers nearly seven years, ending with the group about to head to America in early 1964. But it’s in the first part that we explore Lennon’s relationship with his mother, Julia, who didn’t live with him during his key adolescent years and then was killed in July 1958--run down by a truck while crossing a Liverpool street. Her death left a specter that runs through the rest of Lennon’s life. His 1968 song “Julia” is one of the most sadly tender in his catalog, and the soul-baring “Mother” from his 1971 debut solo album “Plastic Ono Band” is one of pop’s most raw and wrenching moments.

We meet young John (played by Dublin actor-musician Phillip McQuillan with a realistically volatile mix of arrogance and insecurity) at age 16 in 1957, a lad with a dream, a broken home and a quick temper. Only vivacious but flighty Julia (Christine Kavanagh) takes his dream seriously, not only getting him the guitar denied him by his stern Aunt Mimi (a strong Blair Brown performance) with whom he lives, but also teaching him to play and even encouraging his Elvis worship. Soon he has a band, meets McCartney (Daniel McGowan) and just as things start to take shape . . . Julia’s gone.

From there we see the hardening of the emotional wall around Lennon and the steeling of his resolve to make it to the “toppermost of the poppermost.” That determination was intensified with the Hamburg departure and the death of close friend and original Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe and then played out in the complex, substitute-parent role Lennon sought from Epstein (Jamie Glover) as the group’s fame skyrocketed. Both phases are handled with authority and flair, but they’ve been examined more thoroughly and artistically in “Backbeat” and “The Hours and Times,” respectively. There’s nothing new to add.

Still, O’Hara’s screenplay is rich in character, emotion and the sense of time and place; the acting is uniformly strong and natural; and the Liverpool scenery is used with general effectiveness. However, such impressive scenes as the meeting of Lennon and McCartney (virtually beat for beat in line with the authoritative account in Jim O’Donnell’s 1994 book “The Day John Met Paul”) are somewhat undermined by some heavy-handed, cornball foreshadowing. Most embarrassing is having the budding Fab Four cross Abbey Road for their 1962 EMI audition in the manner photographed in 1969 for the “Abbey Road” album cover. We know where Lennon and the Beatles were headed; the strength of this story is where they came from.

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* “In His Life: The John Lennon Story” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on NBC. The network has rated it TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under age 14).