Let It Be: Enjoy Danny Boyle’s “Yesterday” — but don’t think about it too hard.
One of my favorite movies of all time is Richard Curtis’s About Time. In describing it to friends, I usually just call it a love letter to life — a story that hits all the notes of what I consider to be a near-perfect film. It’s a romance, a friendship movie, a family love story — all set against the backdrop of a man who discovers he happens to have the ability to travel in time.
What makes this movie so brilliant — to me at least — is that it is decidedly not a time travel movie. Instead, it is a movie that features time travel as its central driving plot point, but grounds the characters and story in its real world implications. The film invites the viewers to gloss over paradoxes and time loops — in fact, it explicitly tells us not to worry about these at all in a meta-conversation between the father and son at the start. Don’t get caught up in all that nonsense, it says. Don’t think too hard — just enjoy the ride for what it’s worth.
It’s no surprise that Richard Curtis is at it again as the writer of Yesterday, a film that once again places its characters in a world of the extraordinary while grounding the fallout of the miracles in the distinctly ordinary.
In Yesterday, our hero Jack Malik is a struggling musician facing the end of the line on a dream that’s been running on borrowed time for a while now. With bemusedly supportive parents, a day job as some kind of stock boy, a couple of decent songs, and the fervent belief (and secret love) of his best friend, Jack is just about ready to pack it in when a freak accident occurs. All the lights around the world flicker off for 12 seconds. In that moment, Jack is hit by a bus while riding his bike, careening to a nasty face plant that leaves him hospitalized.
When he comes to, Jack slowly begins to realize that he is the only person in the world who remembers the Beatles. The film navigates his journey as he realizes this is his ticket to the big time, leveraging the songs of the Fab Four to skyrocket to success under the watchful eye of a low-key douchey Ed Sheeran and a caricature LA manager played to maximum Kate McKinnon glory by Kate McKinnon.
The film, like About Time’s eagerness to shy away from complicated time travel questions, doesn’t want us to think too deeply about the consequences of wiping out the Beatles. Bowie still exists, but Oasis doesn’t. Ed Sheeran is a songwriting god in this universe too — but one wonders how his career has been shaped without the influence of the Beatles and everyone who was influenced by them. Springsteen’s name comes up — but if Bruce doesn’t see the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964, does he ever go out and buy his first guitar from the Western Auto Appliance store for $18.95? We’re not supposed to ponder these questions, but it’s hard not to.
Without giving too much away, I’ll say that I enjoyed the heck out of this film, at face value. As someone who listened exclusively to The Beatles for about 3 years straight in my early teens (yeah, I had very few friends), the in-jokes and winks were delightful — thought sometimes hit us over the head a bit.
The storyline that runs beneath the elements of the fantastic is played with endearing humanity by Himesh Patel. Supported by a strong cast of secondary characters — the parents were a particular highlight for me — Patel really shines here. As he struggles with his choices, works through his fears of being exposed, and attempts to sort out his feelings for Lilly James’ Ellie, Jack is ultimately facing a hard truth about himself. Early in his farce, Jack, frustrated at not being discovered yet, wonders if the problem isn’t the songs, but him. This question is addressed in one funny yet painful scene when Kate McKinnon’s manager rips apart the one truly original song he tries to sneak into his album amidst the Lennon/McCartney masterpieces. His own writing’s inability to hold up seems to suggest the inverse of his fear — Jack is likable enough and a talented musician — but he will never be a good enough songwriter on his own to succeed. In the end, it appears that it was his talent holding him back. That seems deeply heartbreaking in its own right, though Jack seems to come to terms with this fact by the finale — because hey, all you need is love, right?
Despite shying away from deeper questions about the implications of its core plot point, the film is happy to provide some answers to fun questions — I particularly enjoyed the (albeit short-lived) confusion at Jack’s use of “USSR,” his struggle to remember certain lyrics, and the run-down state of Strawberry Fields and Abbey Road, what with no historical significance to keep them pristine. The film does address one big “what if” that I felt coming a mile away, but won’t spoil here — although for me, the moment raised far more questions than answers and didn’t hit home strong enough to serve as the turning point it was meant to be.
Through all its brushing over of plot holes, way-too-convenient chance meetings, and one particularly (and painfully) public declaration of love, it’s a film that just can’t help but warm your heart. Danny Boyle and Curtis have penned another love letter, this time to the most influential band of the modern era . Though sometimes clumsy, occasionally awkward, and a bit over the top, it’s clearly been crafted with deep, well meaning admiration and love — and I just can’t help but love it back.
It’s an absolute travesty that an Ed Sheeran song was used at the crescendo of the movie, however. That should have been a Beatles song.
