Word: lennons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...this pervasive, alternating mood of renewal and uncertainty that gives Rattle and Hum its size and its impact. The record is timely enough to get in a neat lyrical crack about the new John Lennon biography ("I don't believe in Goldman his type like a curse/ Instant karma's gonna get him if I don't get him first"), but sufficiently tough-minded to resist looking to music for salvation. Like the Lennon song from which it draws its title, God Part II suggests only that if there is any anodyne at all for spiritual pain, it lies inward...
According to Imagine producer David Wolper, camera-wielding fans and interviewers made John Lennon the most filmed personage in history. His records and interviews revealed his most personal thoughts and feelings to a public that came to think it was on a first-name basis with him. How, then, do you make a documentary on a man's life whose most obscure details are universally known, especially when you have thousands of hours of footage from which to choose...
...control over the final product, Imagine could well have been the definitive film about John. Unfortunately much of the footage is ill-chosen, and at an hour and a half, the film is much too short. Still, while Imagine fails as a comprehensive biography, it may help neophytes understand Lennon's appeal, and fans may find Imagine a poignant and occasionally amusing exercise in nostalgia...
...indifference. The song selection is bafflingly random, omitting seminal and important songs like "I Am the Walrus" or "Instant Karma" and including less noteworthy and more obscure titles like "How" and "Love." All the songs, even "Imagine" itself, are abbreviated, with the curious exception of "Twist and Shout," which Lennon didn't compose. Beatles producer George Martin, who expertly handled sound-mixing chores on virtually all the band's recordings and soundtracks over the last 25 years, should be strung up for the way he has remixed the music for this film, boosting the drums to the volume level fashionable...
...sway while singing along with "All You Need is Love." Members of John's family talk about how much they miss him. Finally, there is a clip of John at a white piano in a white room, singing "Imagine." As corny as the sequence sounds, it concludes Imagine: John Lennon in a manner likely to make anyone cry who still mourns for John and his lost promise, as well as that of the Beatles...