From sit-ins for peace to avant-garde events and covert surveillance of revolutionary sympathies, the world John Lennon and Yoko Ono can seem removed from our own.
But a new documentary about the pair exposes the uncanny similarities between the 70s and now, says the Oscar-winning director behind the film.
One by One, by Kevin Macdonald and Ono's career In an 18-month period after moving to New York in 1971, they quickly became prominent figures in the counterculture and anti-Vietnam War movements.
Screening at the London Film Festival, it focuses on the 1972 One to One concert at Madison Square Garden – Lennon's last full-length concert and his only concert since the Beatles – to help children with special needs.
“What I didn't realize until I started making it is that that era seems to have an incredible echo of today, it's like a mirror image,” Macdonald said.
His film includes archival news footage, newly restored 16mm film footage of the Attica prison riot, Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War and the shooting of Alabama Governor George Wallace – and never-before-heard tapes of Lennon and Ono's personal telephones – in concert. The calls were recorded by them when they worried that the FBI was tapping their communications.
It served as a corrective to the idea that, if united, there was something uniquely divisive about contemporary politics, Macdonald said.
“There was a lot of stuff about the early environmental movement and ads on TV to stop oil. I thought we were just having these conversations.
“George Wallace is a clear Trump frontrunner, especially with the recent assassination attempts. Vietnam was as divisive as Gaza today. Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman to run for president. I thought, 'Oh my God, there's nothing new in American politics.'
McDonald, who has directed films including One Day in September, Touching the Void, Whitney, The Last King of Scotland and The Mauritanian, said the realization was “strangely reassuring”.
“We all think today's politics is uniquely terrible, but this shows that something else is coming. Maybe Trump isn't the end of the world.
“What do you do when you're in the biggest band in the world and you're 30?” He said throughout that he wanted to explore the question of
Pictures and records were provided by Lennon's family, while MacDonald and his wife, set decorator Tatiana MacDonald, remodeled Lennon and Ono's West Village apartment, including their posters, records and the TV at the foot of their bed.
“I heard this interview with John where he talks about what it was like to watch TV when he first came to America,” the director said. “I thought, 'This is one way.' Let's make a film about them watching TV and learning about America.
The phone records provide a rare glimpse into the couple's thinking at the time. In one, Ono was accused of breaking up the Beatles and in Britain he was subjected to racial abuse, including being called “ugly” by the press.
In another, Lennon describes his idea for a U.S. tour that would raise bail for insolvent American prisoners, as well as efforts to bring Bob Dylan in (and persuade Dylan's captor AJ Weberman to leave the musician alone).
Macdonald said he was very impressed with the couple's performance in the years before they separated and split for a while (John temporarily moved to LA).
In the concert, during the song Come Together, there is a moment when Lennon shouts “stop the war”. During another song, with the 1972 US election looming, he shouts “Vote”. Nixon won against left-wing Democrat George McGovern.
“They campaigned to defeat Nixon. But Nixon not only won, he won a majority of the vote of young Americans under the age of 25,” MacDonald said. “I think this is what led to John's heavy drinking and the split. They tried to change things and it didn't work. It's heartbreaking, obviously.”
But he said there was something about Lennon and Ono's activism that stood out compared to modern celebrities: It was done at a grassroots level, not on Instagram and X.
“People back then told me their door was open,” he said. “You go in and have tea with them in their beds.”
Lennon was shot dead in 1980. Did MacDonald wonder what the musician would be like if he were alive today?
“A lot, actually. I think he will stay true to his very simple message of peace. He would have sided with the underprivileged. But because he was always so honest, I think he got into trouble too.
According to the director, having him around today is one of the reasons it “would have been great”. “Many celebrities feel the pressure of social media to censor themselves, to say the right thing, to not contradict themselves,” he said.
“But you see in the film that for someone who really has faith, they're not always going to think the same way. They learn from their mistakes.
