Yesterday (Film Review)
Since this is streaming in my part of the world now, I could watch it. It's a charming bit of fluff, written by Richard Curtis, directed by Danny Boyle, starring Himesh Patel as the kind Curtis written RomCom hero who would have been played by Hugh Grant thirty years earlier, Lily James as the heroine, Eillie, Kate McKinnon having fun as an incredibly over the top evil American agent/manager) (is there any other kind in British movies?) (given the subject matter, I'm tempted to think of her as genderswapped Allen Klein and Ellie as genderswapped Brian Epstein), and most of all the Beatles' song catalogue as the sparkling star of the movie.
If, like me, you didn't watch this in the cinema a few years ago: the basic premise recognizable from the trailer and thus unspoilery is this: our hero, Jack Malik, is a former teacher with a passion for music and song writing who's spent the last years trying to make it in the musical scene while taking on humiliating warehouse jobs to make a living. Ellie is his childhood best friend (and still a teacher)/devoted agent who has been working her backside of getting Jack gigs in her non existent free time, but the breakthrough won't happen. (We get to hear two of Jack's songs early in this movie, and they're nice but not spectacular.) Cue miracle event (thankfully unexplained - any explanation would have felt idiotic, the the movie just breezes through without it, which imo was 100% the right decision) that leaves the Beatles (and two or three other things I won't spoil) wiped out from human history (as a cultural event, that is) and Jack as seemingly the only person who can remember them and their songs. Naturally, he gives into temptation and decides to become the Fab One.
What this movie isn't, and doesn't try to be: a serious exploration of a Beatles-less word. There a few gags dealing with the fallout of a timeline where they never happened, but don't try to overthink it; it spoils the fun. And Curtis & Boyle don't make the mistake of letting every audience love every song - one of the most funny moments is when Jack tries to debut Let it Be in front of his parents and they turn out to be utterly oblivious to its magic. Nor does the movie pretend that Jack, armed with the songs, won't still need a few lucky breaks before making it to the toppermost of the poppermost; enter Ed Sheeran in a good natured poking-fun-at-himself cameo appearance. By and large, though, the movie is firmly convinced that the Beatles songs, in any age and era, are pure magic and destined to conquer the world, and being a fan, I firmly subscribe to this theory.
The emotional arc Jack has in the film deals on the one hand with his uncreasing uneasiness and sense of guilt due to the fact he knows he's written not a single note of these songs, and on the other with the "best friends who realise - well one of them at any rate - that they're in love almost too late" story with Ellie which you'll immediately know all the beats of when you know your Richard Curtis movies. I don't mean this as a criticism. It feels like a nice, comfortable pair of slippers, and that's lovely and feels just right for this particular movie. Which is, btw, I chortled with glee about the song choice for the "where are they now" tag scene showing Jack and Ellie as - of course! - Desmond and Molly from Obla-di, Obla-da (Another great match of Beatles song/ emotional state of being is Help! being sung by Jack when he's realised what a trap superstardom has become for him.) (Oh, and I love that the songs Jack has trouble piercing the lyrics and notes together for correctly are the ones with overt Liverpudllian inspirations - Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields Forever and Eleanor Rigby - so that he has to visit Liverpool in order to jump start his memory.
The way the movie goes out of its way to avoid hurting its audience in any way is amazing (or saccarine, depending on your mileage); even the guy who's the secondary love interest for Ellie (usually a character badly treated in romances) is depicted as sympathetic, noble, and Ellie isn't callous to him, either. There's just one exception to this, and it's the emotional plot device ensuring the audience won't root (or at least not undividedly) for the universe to switch back to one with the Beatles in it once Jack has completed his arc. This is something that either feels very poignant or incredibly manipulative and exploitative or both, but it's definitely the one bit where Team Boyle & Curtis move out of the comfort zone a bit. To wit: turns out that while the Beatles never existed, John, Paul, George and Ringo do; since the Beatles never happened, John Lennon is still alive and had, in fact, a good life, with ups and downs, sure, but he's a serene wise old man (who seems to have gone for painting instead of music). He's also played by Robert Carlyle, which made me think "damn, why haven't I thought about this casting before? Younger Robert Carlyle totally should have played John Lennon!" Now John being alive and welll if the Beatles never happened is a bit more optimistic than he was about himself in some interviews (where his own guess tended to go more in the "locked up in psychiatry or dead" direction), but then again, who really can say? Of course, that the movie chose to do this also made me wonder about George. Especially since one of the few other things not existing in this 'verse is co-responsible for his rl death by lung cancer. And I really tried not to wonder about Paul, because I can't imagine any kind of universe where he didn't do something musical, even if, say, he became a teacher for a living (this is what Ray Connelly imagines could have happened in a Beatles-less universe), and he'd started to compose before meeting John, so he'd have recognized some of the melodies - When I'm Sixty-Four, for example - and... never mind. That's overthinking it. Stop that, self. Anyway, I have to admit the John scene worked for me while I was watching.
Lastly: Jack's solo versions of the Beatles' songs are fine - for solo versions. But look, songs like She Loves You or I Wanna Hold Your Hand just don't work the same without the Lennon & McCartney vocal harmonizing. However, if Jack had had a co-singer it would have made for a different dynamic, so I can see why the movie didn't go this way. This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1439396.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
If, like me, you didn't watch this in the cinema a few years ago: the basic premise recognizable from the trailer and thus unspoilery is this: our hero, Jack Malik, is a former teacher with a passion for music and song writing who's spent the last years trying to make it in the musical scene while taking on humiliating warehouse jobs to make a living. Ellie is his childhood best friend (and still a teacher)/devoted agent who has been working her backside of getting Jack gigs in her non existent free time, but the breakthrough won't happen. (We get to hear two of Jack's songs early in this movie, and they're nice but not spectacular.) Cue miracle event (thankfully unexplained - any explanation would have felt idiotic, the the movie just breezes through without it, which imo was 100% the right decision) that leaves the Beatles (and two or three other things I won't spoil) wiped out from human history (as a cultural event, that is) and Jack as seemingly the only person who can remember them and their songs. Naturally, he gives into temptation and decides to become the Fab One.
What this movie isn't, and doesn't try to be: a serious exploration of a Beatles-less word. There a few gags dealing with the fallout of a timeline where they never happened, but don't try to overthink it; it spoils the fun. And Curtis & Boyle don't make the mistake of letting every audience love every song - one of the most funny moments is when Jack tries to debut Let it Be in front of his parents and they turn out to be utterly oblivious to its magic. Nor does the movie pretend that Jack, armed with the songs, won't still need a few lucky breaks before making it to the toppermost of the poppermost; enter Ed Sheeran in a good natured poking-fun-at-himself cameo appearance. By and large, though, the movie is firmly convinced that the Beatles songs, in any age and era, are pure magic and destined to conquer the world, and being a fan, I firmly subscribe to this theory.
The emotional arc Jack has in the film deals on the one hand with his uncreasing uneasiness and sense of guilt due to the fact he knows he's written not a single note of these songs, and on the other with the "best friends who realise - well one of them at any rate - that they're in love almost too late" story with Ellie which you'll immediately know all the beats of when you know your Richard Curtis movies. I don't mean this as a criticism. It feels like a nice, comfortable pair of slippers, and that's lovely and feels just right for this particular movie. Which is, btw, I chortled with glee about the song choice for the "where are they now" tag scene showing Jack and Ellie as - of course! - Desmond and Molly from Obla-di, Obla-da (Another great match of Beatles song/ emotional state of being is Help! being sung by Jack when he's realised what a trap superstardom has become for him.) (Oh, and I love that the songs Jack has trouble piercing the lyrics and notes together for correctly are the ones with overt Liverpudllian inspirations - Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields Forever and Eleanor Rigby - so that he has to visit Liverpool in order to jump start his memory.
The way the movie goes out of its way to avoid hurting its audience in any way is amazing (or saccarine, depending on your mileage); even the guy who's the secondary love interest for Ellie (usually a character badly treated in romances) is depicted as sympathetic, noble, and Ellie isn't callous to him, either. There's just one exception to this, and it's the emotional plot device ensuring the audience won't root (or at least not undividedly) for the universe to switch back to one with the Beatles in it once Jack has completed his arc. This is something that either feels very poignant or incredibly manipulative and exploitative or both, but it's definitely the one bit where Team Boyle & Curtis move out of the comfort zone a bit. To wit: turns out that while the Beatles never existed, John, Paul, George and Ringo do; since the Beatles never happened, John Lennon is still alive and had, in fact, a good life, with ups and downs, sure, but he's a serene wise old man (who seems to have gone for painting instead of music). He's also played by Robert Carlyle, which made me think "damn, why haven't I thought about this casting before? Younger Robert Carlyle totally should have played John Lennon!" Now John being alive and welll if the Beatles never happened is a bit more optimistic than he was about himself in some interviews (where his own guess tended to go more in the "locked up in psychiatry or dead" direction), but then again, who really can say? Of course, that the movie chose to do this also made me wonder about George. Especially since one of the few other things not existing in this 'verse is co-responsible for his rl death by lung cancer. And I really tried not to wonder about Paul, because I can't imagine any kind of universe where he didn't do something musical, even if, say, he became a teacher for a living (this is what Ray Connelly imagines could have happened in a Beatles-less universe), and he'd started to compose before meeting John, so he'd have recognized some of the melodies - When I'm Sixty-Four, for example - and... never mind. That's overthinking it. Stop that, self. Anyway, I have to admit the John scene worked for me while I was watching.
Lastly: Jack's solo versions of the Beatles' songs are fine - for solo versions. But look, songs like She Loves You or I Wanna Hold Your Hand just don't work the same without the Lennon & McCartney vocal harmonizing. However, if Jack had had a co-singer it would have made for a different dynamic, so I can see why the movie didn't go this way. This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1439396.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.