My favourite film: Backbeat
Paul Owen www.theguardian.com
<p>In the latest addition to our writers' favourite film series, Paul Owen explains why the Beatles bromance between John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe strikes a chord</p>
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the Guardian
Backbeat tells the story of the Beatles' pre-fame Hamburg days, focusing on Stuart Sutcliffe, the band's magnetically sexy original bassist, and his relationships with John Lennon and the beautiful and exotic German photographer Astrid Kirchherr. It's a great premise, and director and co-writer Iain Softley tells the tale with all the smart dramatic pacing, period detail and musical verve you might hope for. But, perhaps more surprisingly, he also creates a complex and emotionally sophisticated portrayal of love, friendship and attraction.

Softley hews to received wisdom in his presentation of the Beatles: John is talented, scabrous and aggressive, Paul weak and duplicitous, George third among equals (Ringo makes only a brief appearance). But his portrayal of the friendship between John (Ian Hart) and Stu (Stephen Dorff) is riveting, and Softley admirably refuses to place it in any neat category. The two are very close, and there are elements of jealousy and sexual attraction between them – especially from John towards Stu. But the film never tries to pigeonhole these feelings; instead it is prepared to say that friendships can be complicated and sexuality far from black-and-white.

Overruling Paul's objections, John insists Stu stay in the band despite his lack of musical talent. "He just stands there," complains Paul. "But it's the way he stands there," replies John. Later he tells Stu, almost as a challenge: "She thinks I'm queer, Astrid … You heard her. She thinks I fancy you." The choice Stu has to make between music and art (his abstract expressionist paintings are much better than his bass playing) comes to symbolise a choice between John and Astrid. As Stu becomes increasingly detached from the band, John's reaction resembles that of a rejected lover.

The film is just as interesting and unconventional in its portrayal of the end of the relationship between Astrid (Sheryl Lee) and the artist Klaus Voormann (Kai Wiesinger), whom she left for Sutcliffe. In one awful scene Klaus walks in to find the two of them in bed, and his reaction is one of painful displacement. "You're wearing my robe," he tells Sutcliffe. Wiesinger's face as he watches Astrid's attraction to the other man grow is a terrible thing, but when he catches them together she tells him in German: "You wanted this to happen." He replies: "I know," and she hugs him like a mother would a child.

Dorff and Hart are perfectly cast. The charismatic, laconic Dorff – who was only 19 at the time – effortlessly channels Stu's James Dean cool and has never been better, while Hart, who had played John Lennon before, captures his frenetic bitterness. The script by Softley, Michael Thomas and Stephen Ward gives him some great lines of dry Lennonish wit – I love his summing up of Edith Piaf: "Oh, she's all right, Edith Piaf, but she's an old woman, isn't she? She's got one foot in the grave" – as well as a plausibly caustic motto about art and music: "It's all dick." There is a beautifully shot scene on a beach by an old lighthouse where you watch his girlfriend Cynthia wordlessly realise that one day she is going to lose him to global fame.

The film's soundtrack of early 60s rock 'n' roll – performed by an indie-rock supergroup, including Soul Asylum's Dave Pirner and Dave Grohl (then of Nirvana) – bristles and stomps, and there are some great moments where the songs clatter to an end over the beginning of the next scene.