The U.S. vs. John Lennon movie review (2006)

John and Yoko even came up with their own extra-legal attempt to fight the INS, by declaring themselves citizens of a new country, Newtopia, requesting recognition from the United Nations, and asking the U.S. for diplomatic immunity. Now that is a brilliant strategy. Of course, like most of Lennon's symbolic idealistic gestures, be they utopian or Newtopian, it didn't quite work. But that wasn't really the point, was it? For Lennon, the idea was always to show people that change was only possible once you believed it was possible.

"So, flower power didn't work. So what?" he tells a crowd at the concert for John Sinclair, who had served 2½ years (and was sentenced to 10) for giving two marijuana joints to an undercover policewoman. (This particular utopian gesture did work -- the Michigan Supreme Court ordered Sinclair released from prison a few days later.)

Lennon was always ready to grab the next wave. His and Yoko's publicity stunts for "peace" were condescendingly dismissed as silly, naive and even trivializing, but Lennon was dead serious about promoting the idea of peace: "We're selling it like soap, you know?" And in 1969, there was indeed something liberating and comforting in seeing those billboards (and, in 1971, hearing that song): "WAR IS OVER! (If you want it.) Happy Christmas from John and Yoko."

"The U.S. vs. John Lennon" touches on all of this, and a dose of idealism may be helpful at this deeply cynical moment in American history. (One can't help wondering what a 66-year-old Lennon would have made of Geraldo Rivera, interviewed here, as a Fox News correspondent.) When journalist Carl Bernstein speaks of politically motivated surveillance campaigns and refers to the Nixon administration as "a rogue presidency, a criminal presidency," you know the parallels the filmmakers intend you to draw.

Gore Vidal puts it bluntly. Lennon sang about love and peace and "represented life, and that is admirable," he says. "And Mr. Nixon, and Mr. Bush, represent death. And that is a bad thing."

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