‘One to One: John & Yoko’ Captures a Moment

April 9, 2025

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , 1 Comment

Documentary for the Benefit of John & Yoko (CREDIT: Magnolia Pictures)

Starring: John Lennon, Yoko Ono

Directors: Kevin MacDonald and Sam Rice-Edwards

Running Time: 100 Minutes

Rating: R for Graphic Non-Sexual Nudity and Some Drug Use

Release Date: April 11, 2025 (IMAX Theaters)

What’s It About?: In August 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono performed the “One to One” concert at the world-famous Madison Square Garden in New York City. It was a benefit show for the Willowbrook institution for children with intellectual disabilities, which was notorious for its inhumane conditions. The documentary One to One: John & Yoko tracks the buildup to that show, while also painting a portrait of the couple’s stay in a Greenwich apartment, which they lived in for 18 months from 1971 to 1973. During that time, when they weren’t preparing for the show, the musical couple liked to stay in bed and watch a lot of TV, while also advocating for the freedom of activist John Sinclair, among other activities.

What Made an Impression?: A Reality-Altering Adventure: One to One does not unfold strictly linearly, both in terms of chronology and geometry. Instead, it bounces around from fragment to fragment, often with scratches of static to mark the transitions. In other words, it operates much like human memory, or at least my human memory. No worries if your mind is a little chaotic, though. If you’re someone who’s been alive in the modern world during any of the last several decades, I suspect that you’ll still be able to intuit directors Kevin MacDonald and Sam Rice-Edwards’ style of mediation within mediation pretty naturally, even if doesn’t follow the typical syntax of documentary cinema language.
A Peek Inside: With its mix of archival TV clips and behind-the-scenes footage, One to One also aims to capture the fleeting essence of what it was like to live as John and Yoko during this era. Perhaps the mind-bending style sounds a little too niche or maybe even off-putting to you. But if you have any affection for these people, you’ll surely find yourself touched by the access and vulnerability. And thankfully it doesn’t feel invasive, but instead like a gift to the world of a little piece of their souls.

One to One: John & Yoko is Recommended If You Like: Experimental documentaries, Intimate documentaries, 1970s talk shows

Grade: 4 out of 5 Benefit Concerts

‘The Mauritanian’ Gives Guantánamo Bay Detainee Mohamedou Ould Salahi the Legal Thriller Treatment

February 10, 2021

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The Mauritanian (CREDIT: STX Films)

Starring: Tahar Rahim, Jodie Foster, Shailene Woodley, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zachary Levi, Saamer Usmani

Director: Kevin Macdonald

Running Time: 129 Minutes

Rating: R, Mainly for a Scene of Intense Torture

Release Date: February 12, 2021

In the 2000s and early 2010s, films that grappled with 9/11 and its aftermath tended to be combat thrillers, reaching an apotheosis in terms of cultural impact with 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty. Now the focus has turned toward the War on Terror’s legal repercussions. 2019’s The Report took a deep dive into the massive amount of paperwork detailing the CIA’s use of post-9/11 torture, and now The Mauritanian comes along to narrow its attention on the particular case of Mohamedou Ould Salahi, who was detained at Guantánamo Bay withou charge for more than a decade. His story has been told before via the likes of 60 Minutes and Salahi’s own memoir, but even if you come in to this movie completely cold (as I more or less did), it’s immediately obvious that we are witnessing a miscarriage of justice.

There’s essentially zero doubt at any point in The Mauritanian about Salahi’s innocence. We’re not exactly told this outright, but we might as well be. With the guarded way that Tahar Rahim plays Salahi, there is a sense that he might be susceptible to being tricked into thinking that he has abetted terrorist activity. But these are merely survival tactics, as he mostly keeps his head down and says what is demanded of him when he absolutely has to so as to stay alive and sane enough to get by. The main source of the movie’s tension then is how much our patience is tested: just how long – in real time and movie time – will Salahi be detained? Because if you know anything about Guantánamo Bay, you know it’s probably going to take a while. Luckily, he has a couple of competent lawyers on his case in the form of Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster) and Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley), and with Foster giving off Hall of Fame-level tenacity vibes, we can feel confident that there will be a happy ending eventually.

Salahi’s story is undoubtedly compelling, but in terms of how it works as cinema, it’s not an automatic slam dunk. It mostly avoids indulging in the shoutiest excesses of miscarriage-of-justice legal procedurals, but it perhaps swings too far in the opposite direction, opting for a low-key approach that’s content to mostly just hum along. Then there are the torture scenes, which is something I would happily never see re-created on screen ever again. That’s not to say that it’s always absolutely wrong to portray torture; the ethics of doing so are certainly debatable. But aesthetically, it tends to be jarring and unnecessary, very much so in this case. Still, despite my misgivings, I’m glad that movies like The Mauritanian exist. The value they offer by getting these stories out to a wide audience generally outweigh my trepidations.

The Mauritanian is Recommended If You Like: The due process of law, Un-redacting the redactions

Grade: 3 out of 5 Forced Confessions