‘John Lennon: The Last Interview’ Review: Steven Soderbergh’s Doc
John and Sean Ono Lennon.
Kishin Shinoyama
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Given how adventurous and prolific Steven Soderbergh’s filmography is, it’s a bit of a shock to realize that his new feature — his second this year, after the dark comedy The Christophers — marks only his third time at the helm of a documentary (after two projects focused on Spalding Gray). He took on a particular challenge with this nonfiction outing: Its primary source material, the 1980 conversation that defines and drives the project, has no visual component. How do you turn a radio conversation into a movie?
Soderbergh has found a way, and while some viewers might grow restless at the lack of “action,” the notable achievement of John Lennon: The Last Interview is its immediacy. Bolstered by an engaging profusion of archival photographs and clips (and separately, a touch of AI imagery — more on that later), voices captured half a century ago draw you close.
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John Lennon: The Last Interview
The Bottom Line
Tuned in and full of life.
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Special Screenings)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
1 hour 37 minutes
On the afternoon of Dec. 8, 1980, John Lennon and Yoko Ono welcomed a quartet of radio people into their apartment at the Dakota for a lengthy interview, the former Beatle’s first in several years, to promote the couple’s recently released Double Fantasy. The set’s first single, “(Just Like) Starting Over,” expressed the sense of artistic renewal Lennon was feeling 10 years after the Beatles’ split and after five years away from songwriting, time spent instead as a self-proclaimed househusband focused on the couple’s son, Sean. On the basis of the free-flowing audio evidence and the warm recollections of the interviewers, the meeting went well, alive with a sense of purpose and engagement. Then Lennon and Ono headed out to the studio to work on more music, and upon their return home that night, in the entranceway of their building, Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon dead.
The main-event interview is judiciously edited from its three-hour length and framed by present-day commentary from three of the four people who conducted it: San Francisco station KFRC’s Dave Sholin (music director), Laurie Kaye (on-air host) and Ron Hummel (engineer and producer). (The fourth participant, Warner Bros. Records executive Bert Keane, died during production of the documentary.) Against a stark white backdrop, the radio journalists recall how stoked they were at the chance to speak with someone they so admired. Of course the impact of the experience was deepened and changed by the ghastly events that followed it, but it’s clear that, in the moment, they felt a sense of exhilarating connection with Lennon and Ono.
The interview finds Lennon, having just turned 40, in a reflective mood about himself and his generation (“the ’60s group that has survived”); he offers insights “not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of what we all feel.” He and Ono speak of their marriage as emblematic of a changing paradigm for men and women. They conceived Double Fantasy as a song-cycle dialogue. “Love,” she says early in the conversation, after noting the one-sidedness of the so-called sexual revolution — “is a powerful political weapon.”
Though it’s Lennon’s commentary that shapes the film, the interviewers had some time alone with Ono while her husband finished his photo shoot with Annie Liebovitz. Ono’s significance as a conceptual artist is receiving well-deserved attention these days, but it’s good to hear her voice, forthright, whip-smart and sensitive, at that point in her trajectory, just as it’s good to hear Linda McCartney’s voice in the recent doc Man on the Run, which focuses on Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles transformation. Both women withstood some ridiculously unfriendly scrutiny. Lennon’s recounting of his and Ono’s meeting at a London show of her work, and of the bashful courtship that followed, is one of the most tender and revealing parts of the interview.
The ground rule for the interviewers that day at the Dakota was “No Beatles questions,” but for Lennon, the subject arose organically. It’s notable that in the aftermath of their pop superstardom, both McCartney an