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John Lennon and Yoko Ono in New York in the 70s
Magnolia Pictures
"When my editor, Sam Rice-Edwards, and I were making this, we could not believe that almost every day we were looking at it and saying, 'Oh my God. This is exactly what’s going on in America right now,'" recalls director Kevin Macdonald as we discuss new documentary One to One: John and Yoko.
"There was the first black woman running for President, and you had a right-wing populist who is running for President who gets shot on camera. Richard Nixon behaved with great skullduggery and used the power of the White House in an unconventional way. There are so many aspects of this, including the war in Vietnam, which is paralleled today with the war in Gaza and the divisions on the campuses of America, so it feels like we're living through the weird, warped repeat of what happened in the early 70s in America."
The Oscar-winning filmmaker behind The Last King of Scotland uses never-before-seen Lennon family footage and audio, along with the musician's only full-length show after leaving The Beatles, the One to One benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, as the framework for the film.
"I alternate on whether I think that’s something the parallels with today are reassuring because it makes you realize that what is happening right now is not the end of the world because America has lived through this before, or whether it makes you think, 'Do we not learn anything? Do we keep just repeating the same mistakes?'" Macdonald muses. "I don't know, but it is remarkable. I didn't set out to make a film about today, but it feels that way."
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