Miles Davis makes an appearance. So does Andy Warhol, Dick Cavett, George Harrison, Jack Palance and Fred Astaire among others. The year is 1971, one year after the Beatles officially broke up, and John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono are making a film about love and peace using a string of neo-Dada montages. Take it seriously. Don't take it seriously. The film doesn't make any real demands, only that you feel what's going on and grasp its political message—love, not war.
Originally intended for TV, the 70-minute film—co-directed by Lennon, Ono and Steve Gebhardt (above)—is perhaps one of the first and longest music videos of its time. Lennon's Imagine album would be released in September '71, and the film was conceived to support the album with rich color visuals that have little to do with the lyrics being sung. Instead, we see Lennon and Ono at their Tittenhurst Park home in Ascot, England, at an empty beach in New York, near the Battery in Manhattan, on Wall Street, in Central Park and in London at an anti-war demonstration not to mention a bunch of other places.
Newly restored and recently released on Blu-ray and DVD, Imagine (Eagle Vision) can be viewed narrowly as overwhelmingly pretentious, narcissistic and silly. Ono spends much of the film in hot pants and Lennon seems largely deadpan and smug. But the film also takes your breath away. If you let yourself go, you can excuse Lennon and Ono's self-absorption and focus instead on the music and the glorious visual trip back in time to an era when music had to count for people to care.
Lennon at this point in his career was on top of the world. He had spent 10 years co-creating a form of music that millions of people craved and gladly paid for. When you've invented something that special—whether it's music, the telephone, a personal computer or an electric car—I would suspect you imagine yourself at the center of things and expect people to hang on your every word. In such a situation, I imagine it's easy for you (and your wife) to get a little carried away. And they do.
Imagine was Lennon's second solo studio album, and the title track would become his best-selling single. It was recorded at the home you see at the start of the film. Co-produced by Phil Spector (above), the album alternates between Lennon's songs and voice and Ono's. Her contributions are notoriously shrill and out of tune. But if you keep an open mind, all of it works in a strange, jagged way. Lennon is 30 in 1971 and Ono is 38. Two years into their marriage, they can't keep their hands off of each other, and their affection becomes art that's set to their own music. [Photo above courtesy of IMDB]
Once you've exhausted your "What's the point?" remarks and have gotten your "She broke up the Beatles" out of your system, you realize that the film is a rather fascinating document of devotion, peace and boredom all stirred together. How tiresome life must be when you have everything you want but can't go unrecognized in public with the dread of being mobbed. Or worse, you wake up and have no idea what to do that day or the next day or the one after that. In this regard, there's a Twilight Zone quality to Lennon and Ono's romps through much of the film. [Photo above from YouTube]
All of that aside, I like the film a lot, but you do have to view it with your ears. You have to hear the film before you can see it. If you focus on the music, you suspend your brain's judgmental demands for a plot and clarity. If you view what you're seeing simply as a visual overlay, a playful and plotless dance that darts here and there, the music sinks in and the images tag along. [Photo above from YouTube]
At the end, you come to realize that you've spent an incredibly intimate 70 minutes with two people you thought you knew through books and headlines but didn't. In the process, you experience audio and visual art that has little to do with each other but everything to do with each other. What an interesting world we lived in back then and how unfortunate we didn't understand or appreciate it. Imagine takes you by the hand and leads you down a giddy garden path. When the trip is over, you feel you know John and Yoko better and what mattered to them, and you feel more in touch with yourself. [Photo above from YouTube]
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Imagine, the film, here.
Also on the same Blu-ray and DVD discs are Gimme Some Truth, a documentary on the making of the Imagine album, and bonus features.
If you want to give yourself a gift, there's Imagine: The Ultimate Collection (Capitol), a four-CD/two-Blu-ray disc box set here.
JazzWax clip: I hesitate to provide you with a clip from the film, since it would be out of context. You have to experience the entirety. Instead, here's the trailer...
