Looking at the Past: Robert Zemeckis’ I Wanna Hold Your Hand.
Before he took Marty McFly back to 1985, Robert Zemeckis debuted with this comedic tale of a major pop culture moment.
It is very clear Robert Zemeckis has a thing for the past. He won many awards for recreating the 1960s with Forrest Gump. He brought an animated mystery to 1940s Hollywood with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and of course, he built an entire trilogy out of a teenager meeting his family in the 1950s with Back to the Future. His fascination with past eras is clear in his debut feature, I Wanna Hold Your Hand.
Set on that very special night in 1964 when the Beatles made their first appearance on American television on The Ed Sullivan Show, I Wanna Hold Your Hand tells the story of six teenagers attempting to attend that show. Co-writing the film with his regular collaborator Bob Gale, I Wanna Hold Your Hand originally struck me as a film that would make a great double feature with George Lucas’ American Graffiti, a film also about one night in the life of a group of young people. I Wanna Hold Your Hand also feels like it’s built around a memory and is equally as nostalgic. However, Zemeckis uses his film to show the utter absurdity of the…
