Blast From The Past: How Sean Ono Lennon helped his parents send a message

•  BEN SISARIO

NEW YORK: Three years ago, Sean Ono Lennon was asked to develop a music video for the 50th anniversary of “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” the 1971 protest song by his parents, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which has become a rare type of perennial — a warm-hearted Christmas tune that doubles as an antiwar challenge, telling ordinary citizens that peace can be achieved “if you want it.”

But Lennon, 48, was not interested in making a simple video. That “felt unnecessary” for such a well-known track, he said in a recent interview. What intrigued him more was the possibility of expanding the song’s message through a narrative film. After about two years of work, that project became “War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko,” directed by Dave Mullins, which was nominated for an Academy Award for best animated short film. The 11-minute picture is set in a World War I-like battle zone where two soldiers on opposing sides take part in a secret chess game, communicating their moves via a homing pigeon that dodges bombs over a snowy No Man’s Land. In the story’s climax, both armies are ordered into bloody hand-to-hand combat while the opening lines of John and Yoko’s song ring out: “So this is Christmas/And what have you done?”

For Sean Lennon, who in recent years has gradually taken on the responsibility of managing his parents’ artistic legacies — his mother, 91, has officially retired — the film is part of a continual process to keep that work relevant for younger generations. He is well aware that even a Beatle’s classic can fade away without tending. “It’s not about mining the past,” Lennon said by phone. “You’re competing with generations of people who have not grown up with the same culture and art that most people my age and older take for granted. So, for me, it’s very important that the message of peace and love, which may be a trope, are not forgotten.” “What I don’t want,” he added, “is for my mother and father’s work to disappear with the sands of time.”

The film was made with the help of some substantial forces. Mullins was a longtime animator at Pixar, and in 2021 he joined Brad Booker, the film’s producer, in a new production company, ElectroLeague; “War Is Over” is its first completed project. The score is by Thomas Newman, the Oscar-nominated composer whose credits include “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Wall-E.” Lennon and Ono are among the executive producers.

Lennon was connected to Mullins through a mutual friend, and in an initial meeting they came up with the basic concept of the war setting, the chess game and the messenger pigeon. Mullins said he wrote the full script immediately afterward. (Lennon and Mullins are credited with the film’s story, and Mullins has sole writing credit.)

Lennon had recently gotten to know the director Peter Jackson through “The Beatles: Get Back,” his three-part, nearly eight-hour odyssey about the band’s troubled recording sessions in early 1969, and Lennon asked him for advice on “War Is Over.” Mullins recalled that at a dinner meeting with Lennon in March 2022, he watched in stunned silence as Lennon texted with Jackson, his phone emitting a little whistle as each message was sent. “My heart was just beating a mile a minute,” Mullins recalled. “Like, oh my God, Peter Jackson’s got our script!”