The enormous IMAX intimacy of ‘One to One: John & Yoko’

Lennon was once quoted as saying TV “replaced the fireplace when (he) was a child,” a sentiment MacDonald deploys early on, and treats as his North Star. His structure is straightforward: interspersed with footage from Lennon and Ono’s “One to One” benefit concert at Madison Square Garden in August 1972, the movie traces the duo’s move from London to New York the year prior, as well as their activism, museum installations, and other public performances with political overtones. Rather than seeking the opinions of contemporary talking heads, One to One tracks the couple through their televised interviews and the numerous phone calls they recorded—some of vital importance, others hilariously banal, presented alongside text transcripts—during a moment for U.S. politics that was fraught in familiar ways. All the while, it illuminates the world around them through the medium of television, from news stories to everyday advertising, weaving an essayistic fabric through found footage from the era.

The film’s only contemporary scenes are a stunning re-creation of the couple’s tiny, messy apartment, with the purpose of drawing us toward their flickering television set. With frequent clicks that change the “channel,” One to One surfs from topic to topic, as one might have at the time, unveiling the images that would’ve shaped people’s consciousness. The film’s exclusive IMAX release today (a week before it plays in regular theaters) is the ideal viewing venue, in part because its squarish CRT TV shape maps quite well onto IMAX screens. However, a key reason the movie works blown up to the size of cinema’s largest canvas is its emotional impact. Seeing televised images on this scale emphasize their importance, but the moments MacDonald borrows from the couple’s performances—especially its lingering closeups as they sing—are overpowering in their intimacy.

The movie essentially examines the late Lennon and still-living Ono as they exist in the public consciousness, and through the conversations they recorded as contingency when they suspected their phone lines were being tapped. As major icons, they’ve all but transcended the physical, and by bringing them to life primarily through existing video and audio, MacDonald presents highly detailed versions of real people who—to most of us today—exist as digital ghosts. He also situates them within the incendiary political context that defined their work.

The movie’s cavalcade of TV clips orients us in time in numerous ways, from the sitcoms and game shows that made for casual distractions, to urgent news stories on the Vietnam War, and Richard Nixon’s pending re-election. Interviews with other activists appear as well, constantly widening the movie’s political scope, while also creating contemporary ripples that connect the era to the present, more 50 years later. For instance, a key subplot involves state retaliation against Lennon and Ono for their anti-war activities, the result of which is their potential deportation—a tale that feels all too relevant in light of the Trump administration cracking down on pro-Palestine activists in recent weeks.

Yoko Ono and John Lennon in "One to One: John & Yoko."

Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

One to One doesn’t quite seek to illuminate the personal lives of its subjects, but it does present the limitations to their celebrity activism, as revealed by the aforementioned phone calls. Given the retaliation against them, there’s only so much they’re willing or able to do. The optics around their public image don’t appear to be far from their minds, especially when questions of violent political resistance arise. The parallel tale of an obsessive Bob Dylan fan going through the blues singer's trash and harassing him for perceived hypocrisies illuminates the fraught position of famous artists held to account for their politics, and the two threads collide in intriguing ways. Meanwhile, the presence of other outspoken celebrities in the film, like the beat poet Allen Ginsberg, helps further establish the parameters of who exactly was saying what at the time, and what socio-political issues were on the culture’s tongue.

MacDonald and editor Sam Rice Edwards’ assembly is paramount to the movie’s detailed sense of history, as well as its contemporary echoes. Its propulsive, rhythmic unfurling is akin to that of Soundtrack to a Coup d'État, Johan Grimonprez’s 2024 documentary on the CIA weaponizing Black music. Only instead of jazz, MacDonald uses Lennon and Ono’s popular, pulsating rock and roll to soundtrack the gradual raising of youth consciousness in the United States.

By aping not just the medium of TV as it existed in the ‘70s, but the sheer pace at which images fly at viewers in today’s information age, One to One: John & Yoko speaks a unique kind of visual language familiar across generations: that of rapid channel surfing and social media doom-scrolling. It turns the passive, turn-your-brain absorption of information into an active process—as academically informative as it is toe tapping—resulting in a film that’s equal parts concert doc and protest essay, buoyed by the rousing political highs of both artistic forms. You may not come away knowing much more about Lennon and Ono than before, but you’ll likely leave with a more intimate spiritual understanding of what they meant to a rapidly changing world.