INTO THE MIND OF A KILLER: THE KILLING OF JOHN LENNON

It’s quite a popular gimmick for those a few generations back to ask “where were you when John Lennon died?” “Where were you when you first heard John Lennon died?” And a lot of people who were alive at the time actually remember too… John Lennon… Poet and philosopher to some, a good writer of songs to others, a man who understood marketing and fame very very well to yet others… For me? Possibly a combination of all three… The point is, his death shook the world. There is indeed great tragedy in loosing such a brilliant artist, however, the size of the tragedy sometimes makes us forget one of the most important people in the affair. Mark Chapman. The man who actually killed him…
This film is the story of Chapman. It tells his own story in his own authentic words and gives us a brilliantly clear if rather disturbing image into his mind and the reasons behind his actions – or rather the lack of them. Chapman is married and lives in Hawaii. He is unsettled, slightly “confused” (or so say his friends family and neighbors) but generally considered harmless. There is a lot people don’t know about him though. His love of the film Taxi Driver, his growing obsession with The Catcher in the Rye and its hero Holden Caufield and last of all the mission he feels God has given him through this book. He is the catcher in the rye as far as he’s concerned. And he is about to do his generation a “big service”.
This film is strange and fascinating. And it is by no means easy to watch. Its pace and its editing are as quick, fluid and off the wall is its subject matter, and this is possibly why I feel it does such a good job of portraying him. It is normal for anyone who loved Lennon to want to understand why such a thing had to be done. Chapman is the first to admit he doesn’t clearly know. It isn’t so much a concrete reason it’s more a state of mind, a state of confusion, a chain of thought that somehow ends in an action. You get to the end of the film with the feeling that even if you don’t consciously understand how Chapman’s mind works, you can kind of feel how it works… Not in a sense that you sympathize with him, oh no… It is very evident (despite the many psychiatric evaluations at the time claiming otherwise) just by listening to Chapman’s testimony that he is a very disturbed individual, there is nothing to “sympathize with” about what he did… But aren’t you a little bit curious, academically speaking, what the heck was going through his head as he prepared to pull the trigger? Watch this film and see… I don’t claim it’s easy to watch, never the less, you will not regret the time you spent on it…