First there was A Hard Day’s Night (1964), which chronicled the early days of Beatlemania. Then there was Backbeat (1994), which brought us to Hamburg, the first leg of the Fab Four’s road to real fame. Now there is Nowhere Boy, a splendid companion piece covering the two or three years just prior to the Beatles’ first jaunt to the Reeperbahn.

I had been anticipating this movie for months, and the other night I finally got the chance to see it at my local theater. A young British actor named Aaron Johnson is remarkably superb as John Lennon, the focus of this stark yet engaging film directed by Sam Taylor-Wood and written by Matt Greenhaigh, who based his script on a memoir by Julia Baird, Lennon’s half-sister.

Most of the movie explores the relationship between John and his Aunt Mimi, who raised him from the age of five, and that of John and his mother, Julia, a troubled and immature woman who never felt she had the strength to be a part of John’s life until it was too late to make a difference.

The feelings coursing through John that linger from his mother’s neglect mixed with those born of her sudden reappearance in his life are portrayed visually in a masterful way.

Aaron Johnson captures Lennon’s desperate playfulness and inner turmoil with every word, facial expression, and violent outburst. He makes me wonder if John loved rock and roll for the sake of the music itself, as Paul McCartney did, or if he grasped onto the music as a way out of a psychological hell. Seeing this movie helps us understand the source of the pain we hear in early Beatles songs like “I Call Your Name.”

Kristin Scott Thomas is perfect as the stoic Mimi, determined to steer John toward proper manhood. I kept waiting for her famous line, “The guitar’s all very well, John, but you’ll never make a living out of it,” but she never said it, which is probably all well and good, I’ve decided, because it would have sounded cheesy since everybody knows it. And Anne-Marie Duff hits every nuance just right to give us a sympathetic portrait of the unstable Julia.

The few musical scenes that serve to drive the plot are touching because the fledgling Beatles’ musicianship is immature but, since we have hindsight, full of promise. Paul skillfully playing “Twenty Flight Rock” for John at their first meeting and John feigning indifference and skepticism to maintain his pride in front of his band, the Quarrymen, is an emotional highlight of the film. It peeks into the heart of John and Paul’s burgeoning partnership and also foreshadows their future conflicts.

No well-known Lennon-McCartney songs are played during the narrative, which is fitting since they hadn’t yet been written, but the first sound on the soundtrack is the distinctive opening chord to “A Hard Day’s Night,” not as heard on the Beatles record, but that same chord nonetheless. This is the perfect opening touch, the first of many small details that are right on the mark.

I have no idea how someone who is not a Beatles fan would respond to this film, but if you love the Beatles, you will love this movie.