Yesterday (reviewed by Ben)
I invite the reader to imagine waking up one morning and a parent or guardian who’s played a seminal role in your life and growth was gone. Completely erased from existence. If we ignore for a moment the sadness and loss that one would feel about them not being around in the future, the impact of erasing their existence from the past would be colossal.
I think that’s a pretty accurate way to illustrate what it would look like for a singer-songwriter (particularly one who writes about the sun, roads and love) to wake up one day in a world where no one had ever heard of the Beatles, a world where they had never made music, where all their impact on music was erased.
Even if you don’t think it would be paradoxical that a singer-songwriter of that nature would exist without the Beatles, the degree to which our world (musically and otherwise) would look different is scarcely explored in this year’s hit film Yesterday. While it’s a boatload of fun to watch, not to mention a great excuse to listen to the terrific music of Paul, John, George and Ringo, I struggled to get past its central premise.
Speaking of struggling, the hero of the film is struggling musician Jack Malik (played by Himesh Patel) who wakes up after a freak accident during a worldwide blackout to find that his friends assume that the cover of “Yesterday” he plays for them is his latest (and first) hit song. He does some searching and finds out that not just the Beatles but Oasis (a group frequently accused of being a Beatles ripoff) never existed. Other than that, everything else is pretty much the way Malik left it.
His unknowing manager (and conflicted love interest) Ellie (played by Lily James) delights as Malik begins to play the Fab Four’s greatest hits songs, passing them off as his own. At first he’s disappointed (kind of) when he’s not an immediate success. But once real-life pop sensation Ed Sheeran (in a more-than-cameo role) hears “Malik’s” stuff, he offers him a spot on his latest tour to Russia where he wows a surprisingly unbewildered audience with Back in the USSR. From there, it’s just a few montage scenes before Malik is bigger than Sheeran himself. But as the music becomes bigger and bigger, so does the moral dilemma at the heart of Malik’s career.
It’s entertaining enough, especially in scenes where Malik’s American agent, who is hilariously intense, riff on today’s music industry. You can’t fault the movie for lack of humor either, especially in scenes like one where Malik tries to treat his parents to the first-ever playing of “Let It Be,” but his dad’s phone keeps going off.
The central romance isn’t strong enough to support how much the movie forces it forward in the third act, and there’s one scene in which Jack stands in a sort of abyss and watches the stats of his music skyrocket which is both cheesy and stupid. Other than that, the execution of this movie is pretty solid, and it’s well written, directed and acted (especially from the charming Mr. Patel). So my problem with the film is mostly conceptual.
The movie fails to address the cultural impact of the biggest rock band of all time, except in casual ways where it just kind of says, ‘gee, it is great to live in a world where people have heard The Beatles. They sure made great music.’
The idea that we would be exactly where we are today without the impact they had on every genre from classic rock to electronic is only coherent if you watch this movie with lightest eye possible and avoid thinking of the actual connotations of removing such a cultural touchstone.
Early on a joke is made, where a character tells Jack that “Yesterday” is no “Fix You” (Coldplay). If the writers were to actually listen to both of these songs with a bit of cultural understanding, they’d be able to draw a direct line from The Beatles’ innovative songwriting to the Coldplay’s track existing at all. Maybe I’m taking it too seriously, but I feel that this movie does try to make an actual statement on the importance of the Beatles. It’s not only trying to be a ridiculous bit of fun, but a cultural commentary on their importance. If that’s the case, it shouldn’t come across like the writers did little more than listen to some greatest hits.
Dad Responds: Boy, what a party pooper! OK, I fully appreciate that removing The Beatles from history’s timeline would cause so many monumental ripples that not one thing in the Yesterday universe would make a lick of sense. But that seemed (to me anyway) like the central joke in a film that is primarily a comedy/romance. (Other gags involving items that never made it into the film’s universe — like no Coke in a world that still had Pepsi, seemed to signal that conceit.)
Given how much you know about and love music, I appreciate your response to a scenario that reduces a phenomenon as multifaceted as the Beatles to the just the beauty and impact of their songs. But the film somehow captured the sensation of being there when those numbers were first performed, and hinted that the magic inherent in the songs themselves could move people even in our jaded corporatized artistic age.
I agree that the lack of spark between the romantic leads meant the stakes were low when it came time for a climax, and one scene that other reviewers seem to view as blasphemous (which will not be disclosed) just came off as strange to me. But Yesterday packed more magic than would be generated by just calling up Sgt. Pepper on Spotify. So consider me a fan.
