Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade

A documentary film piecing together the last decade of John Lennon’s life provides a look back at the events leading up to the fateful day in December 1980 when one of the UK’s most famous musicians was murdered outside the Dakota his adopted second home in New York.

Directed by Alan G Parker, a music documentarian known for Never Mind the Sex Pistols as well as It Was Fifty Years Ago Today…Sgt Pepper and Beyond, Parker pulls together the story through interviews with the musicians and journalists around John Lennon at the time when making what would be his last album Double Fantasy with his wife, Yoko Ono.

The documentary starts off with the lead up to his new tour which was going to take place after a five year hiatus, at the age 40 years old. There’s a general air of surprise from the tour manager, musicians and journalists who get the call to work on the album, which is maybe an inference of a fall from grace but there is also an unbelievable gratitude to get the honour to work with John Lennon. The album gets finished and the media interviews wrap up and everybody goes home on that December evening, then news starts to filter in early the next morning…

Of course the documentary journeys back further than a decade to pick out the people and events in his life that quickly reshapes our knowledge and understanding of who John Lennon was, but in the context of an agent provocateur, starting with archive footage of him defending his infamous simile about the popularity of the Beatles, the band of four working class lads from Liverpool, attracting the world’s attention in what was termed ‘Beatlemania’. Then it moves onto his relationship and marriage with Yoko Ono, the Japanese artist who captured his love with her eccentric artistic sensibilities that was epitomised by their famous naked Love In at their apartment, where they invited in the press to spread an anti war message of peace and love for which his name and music became synonymous with.

The interviews Alan G Parker pulls together have an interesting journalistic bias but are not without input from the musicians and the music producers that were also around John Lennon at the time providing a valid weight of credibility and include some incredulous revelations as well as some curious anecdotes that will nonetheless have fans and critics mulling over for hours, such as the broadcast news journalist on the Emergency ward of the hospital at the time of John’s arrival who could not help but breach his journalistic ethics.

The opening credits show a bold ambition that perhaps lack a final finesse, which would be a harsh appraisal of the documentary overall as its genuineness in the serious subject matter and the closeness to the final moments it takes the audience makes it avid viewing even at an extended run time of 2 hours 20 minutes.

Timely and poignant as ever the end story doc of an inevitable iconic musical great.

Opening in UK cinemas from 2nd May with an exclusive Director’s Cut available on the Icon Film Channel from the same day.