The new documentary One to One: John & Yoko offers an illuminating look into John Lennon’s post-Beatles activism with his partner Yoko Ono. It captures an early 1970s climate that was charged with political unrest and media saturation.
Rather than perpetuate the simplified myth of Lennon as a lone revolutionary figure, the film spotlights Ono’s equally influential role in their shared artistic and social endeavours. The film also highlights how Lennon and Ono aimed to galvanise a generation that had grown apathetic and disillusioned after the perceived failure of the 1960s “flower power” to deliver genuine social change.
The film adopts a pop-art, “channel surfing” aesthetic that situates the viewer in a recreated version of Lennon and Ono’s Greenwich Village apartment. This form plays on Lennon’s own television addiction. The story unfolds amid rapid cuts between Richard Nixon reelection speeches, anti-war demonstrations and playful consumer ads for laundry soap or ground beef – as if the viewer is surfing television channels.
