THE STORY – “John Lennon: The Last Interview” captures an extraordinary and intimate moment in music history – the final in-depth conversation John Lennon ever gave. On December 8, 1980, Lennon and Yoko Ono sat down with a small radio crew in their New York apartment to promote the release of their album Double Fantasy. What followed was an unfiltered, wide-ranging discussion about music, politics, fatherhood, and life. Just hours later, Lennon was killed. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, the documentary presents the complete interview for the first time, framed by reflections from those who were present, revealing a man at the height of his creative and personal powers, openly looking toward the future he would never see.
THE CAST – N/A
THE TEAM – Steven Soderbergh (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 100 Minutes
Be it through documentaries (Peter Jackson’s “The Beatles: Get Back”) or fiction (Sam Mendes’ upcoming four-film extravaganza), The Beatles continue to populate our screens. Such is the enduring quality of their music and the aura surrounding the quartet from Liverpool. And given the amount of publicly available material, it’s arguably even more interesting when something comparatively rare shows up, and that’s undoubtedly what will draw audiences to seek out Steven Soderbergh’s “John Lennon: The Last Interview.” Beatles and Lennon aficionados will undoubtedly flock to see it, even if the film itself is theoretically well-intentioned. However, it may be a mixed bag, if not an outright, infuriating disappointment, for a variety of reasons.
As the title suggests, the film is very much a case of doing what it says on the tin: it’s a documentary rooted in the last words ever spoken by John Lennon in a public context. The radio interview took place in his apartment in New York City on December 8, 1980, with the man himself and his partner, Yoko Ono, engaging in a long-distance conversation, ostensibly to promote their new album “Double Fantasy.” Later that same day, the former Beatle was killed at the hands of Mark David Chapman, making that interview a sort of artistic and philosophical testament. And now, courtesy of Soderbergh’s film, the complete conversation is available for the first time, with present-day snippets of the original interviewers (Dave Sholin and Laurie Kaye, assisted by Ron Hummel and Bert Keane) providing some additional context, such as the detail that they were kept waiting because Lennon and Ono were also doing a photo session with Annie Leibovitz on the same day.
The main hook, as mentioned, is the interview itself, and on that front, it’s hard to argue that the documentary doesn’t deliver. Although the Beatles’ voices have been parodied to death over the decades (Wakko Warner in “Animaniacs”, Dana Carvey’s standup routines, etc.), there’s still something very captivating about John Lennon’s accent and speech patterns. As such, hearing him talk about a wide array of topics for an extended period of time is definitely a fascinating experience, even without the knowledge that he was unknowingly laying it all bare mere hours before his untimely death. Still, the added layer of cruel cosmic irony adds a note of melancholy to the cinematic operation surrounding the audio, and it’s on filmmaking grounds that Soderbergh’s effort ultimately crumbles.
The new interview footage, for example, is probably necessary to provide some contextual guidance for viewers who don’t enter the screening with encyclopedic knowledge of Lennon’s life and career. That said, their insights, though sometimes entertaining, are generally surface-level and occasionally do little more than pad the runtime. And yet, one can argue that at least their contributions are still entirely human-made. That’s an important argument given what happens in other sections of the film, and why “John Lennon: The Last Interview” is inevitably bound to divide opinions, especially in critical circles.
In fact, on the archival side, the footage is not always mind-blowing, but it provides a nice visual accompaniment to Lennon and Ono’s voices. From time to time, AI technology is used to make some of the still images move a little, which is weird but not entirely off-putting. And then, out of nowhere, the same technology pops up to create entire, extended sequences illustrating the contents of Lennon’s mind. It’s utterly bizarre and, as is par for the course for AI, fairly unpleasant to look at.
Now, if there’s a filmmaker we’re not surprised to learn would have a crack at the technology, it’s Soderbergh, a man who has often used cinema as a sort of personal sandbox for experimentation. And there’s certainly room for a judicious use of artificial intelligence, or even a creatively subversive one that leans into the unattractiveness of the resulting aesthetic: the recent Swiss documentary “Social Landscapes” smartly used AI visuals to convey its point about the disconnect between real-world locations and how we perceive them via social media and online reviews. But there’s no hint of such irony here, with the uncanny valley effect being the usual bug, not a feature.
Adding to the strictly formal disquiet, there is a more ethical one, as the end credits list Meta, which supplied the AI tech used in the film, as a production company. Thus, the line between artistic product and cynically corporate ad becomes appallingly blurred, whether Soderbergh intended it or not. And however noble the aim of the overall project may be, Lennon’s final words are a bit sullied by this crassly digital malfeasance, to the point that one might consider waiting for the streaming release to look away from the screen, enjoying the interview in its unfiltered glory.
