The Killing of John Lennon

The name Mark David Chapman was etched into public memory on December 8, 1980, when he fatally shot music legend John Lennon. Even today, interest in 25-year-old Chapman's motive is curbed by horrified outrage. Andrew Piddington's drama uncovers the murderer's psychologically shattered personality, developed through years of obsession with his idol and artefacts as innocuous as Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. The narration is provided by Chapman, played by Jonas Ball, and offers not only an exceptionally focused probe into the inside of an unhinged personality, but also a more general study of human loneliness, futility, and desperation, which can be unexpectedly discharged in an act of "high-profile" violence. In this sense, Piddington's film, an independent production three years in the making that uses the most authentic locations possible and amateurs or unknown actors, echoes Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) or Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994). (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)