Two of Us (2000)★ 7.3/10

“You, me and everything between us.”

I spent the last few years scared to watch this movie. I had seen the elevator scene because it popped up on tumblr a couple of times, but I didn’t want to see the movie and be disappointed if it was just another stereotypical John and Paul fight take.

It was so much more than that.

When the credits rolled in, I found myself nearly crying. I am an easy crier, but I knew if I started I wouldn’t have stopped. I didn’t expect to be moved by a movie released 20 years ago about a fictional reunion. I was born in the same year this movie was released, so maybe we were meant to find each other in the same way Paul and John found each other.

It’s not an objectively perfect movie, as I’m sure anyone who sees a clip will realise, but it feels perfect to me and that’s what cinema is about. I’ve watched some of what most people regard as the best movies ever made (Gone with the wind, Citizen Kane and The Godfather Part II), but this movie was the one that hit me so close I felt breathless when it ended.

It’s funny, intimate and angsty. It’s very much a fanfic made into a Home Video Movie, but fanfics are works of art that deserve my outmost respect. You’ve spent so much time invested in the fights and jokes and music of Paul and John that when they are sitting in a rooftop and Paul talks about what he sees, you see it too. John Lennon was no God, no Jesus, but if he was, then Paul was Peter, and even if he denied him three times, when John came back, Paul was ready to affirm his love three times.

“I see a frightened man who doesn’t realise how beautiful he is.”

A lot is talked about Paul and John, mostly about how their relationship was left in shambles after The Beatles broke up. A lot of people think that their relationship was not as close as say Paul and George, and that there was always a creative struggle within the duo. That’s bullshit, and this movie understands it.

Whether you ship McLennon or you don’t, you only have to see a video of them in the early days to get struck by how much these two men were in tune with each other. They wrote the most beautiful songs together, but their story goes beyond music and feuds, they were two men with different yet similar backgrounds, who found each other despite how little chance we have of finding our perfect match.

They were soulmates, platonic or romantic or whatever you want to think of that. This movie is one and a half hours of the imagination of someone who knew Paul and John, and this is, I think, the best interpretation of their relationship I’ve ever seen. We can be sure that after Ringo and Paul are gone (hopefully in a long time) we will get dozens of biopics of them, and I think we shall judge them basing them in this one particular Home Video Movie.

Paul and John’s relationship is something we will never understand, because it was much more than just best friends, partners or mortal enemies... But I think Two of Us is the closest we’ll ever get to witnessing the love and appreciation they had for each other.