John Lennon's son makes animation inspired by his parents' song

In 2021, Sean Ono Lennon was looking to make a music video for one of his parents' most iconic songs - John Lennon and Yoko Ono, but felt stuck creatively. A chance meeting with Dave Mullins was when things began to change.

Tác phẩm được lấy cảm hứng từ các tác phẩm trong giai đoạn Đệ nhất Thế chiến. Ảnh: Electro League — The work was inspired by works from the period of World War I.

The 1971 song Happy Xmas ( War Is Over ) is perhaps the most famous song that John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote together as a couple. But aside from being a Christmas staple, it also has a slightly different message of peace .

“It felt like it deserved to be re-released to be more accessible to a new generation,” Sean says. “The only problem was that every music video idea seemed too mundane,” and “It couldn’t be done with a family sitting around a fire. It needed a more realistic story.”

Then came Mullins, who directed Pixar’s Oscar-nominated 2017 short Lou , whose other credits include Finding Nemo and Up . Over Zoom, Lennon and Mullins talked about major wartime events, including the Christmas truce between British and German soldiers during World War I, when the two sides paused fighting for the holidays and played some impromptu soccer matches.

That conversation was a serendipitous moment that helped shape this project. Two years later, with the fortuitous involvement of Peter Jackson—who directed and produced the 2021 Disney+ documentary The Beatles: Get Back , and who recently made the AI-powered music video for the song Now and Then —Mullins wrote and directed an ambitious 11-minute animated film about a game of chess played on enemy lines with the help of a heroic carrier pigeon.

This fall, the film also quietly made the Oscar longlist, and is looking for a distributor.

There is still a message of peace and love...

“Sean and I are friends, and he initially wanted some advice on his script,” Jackson said. “I remember saying that a short film would take 12 to 14 months to make, and that the conflicts that were going on would most likely be resolved before it was finished. But the chaos didn’t stop, it just escalated.”

Trận đấu cờ trở thành điểm nhấn trong phim. Ảnh Cinanima — The chess match became the highlight of the film.

Visually, the film's style was inspired by artists including Norman Rockwell and JC Leyendecker, as well as re-stylized World War I propaganda posters. For the artists involved in the project, the work presented new creative challenges.

The film ends with Lennon and Ono’s song in the credits, but the story opens again with a long song written by 15-time Oscar nominee Thomas Newman. He has worked on extremely famous projects such as WALL-E, Skyfall …

Newman said he felt a lot of pressure because the Lennon and Yoko song was so great. “It’s iconic, and how do you make it new?” Ultimately, the musician and producer decided to create a new piece of music, completely independent of the original song.

The film has reportedly been shown to studios over the past few weeks in the hopes of finding a distributor. It has reportedly been well received and praised, but no deals have been signed yet.

There's no denying the timeliness of War Is Over! , but for Sean, it's also frustrating. "For me, it's sad that my parents' message of peace and love is still relevant today, because it was written so long ago," he says.

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