YESTERDAY
****
Director: Danny Boyle
Screenwriter: Richard Curtis, based on an original screenplay by Jack Barth and Mackenzie Crook.
Principal cast:
Himesh Patel
Lily James
Joel Fry
Meera Syal
Sanjeev Bhaskar
Kate McKinnon
Ed Sheeran
Country: UK/USA
Classification: M
Runtime: 116 mins.
Australian release date: 27 June 2019
Previewed: In season at Verona Cinema, Sydney.
Yesterday, directed by Danny Boyle, was selected as the closing night film at this year’s Sydney Film Festival. It is a tribute to The Beatles and is a fun-filled, far-fetched experience that reminds you just how brilliant the ‘Fab Four’s’ songs are and how they have survived, and will survive, the test of time. They wrote music that will still be listened to far into the future. The film toys with the idea that the group never actually existed, except through the eyes of the film’s protagonist, Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), and one or two others. It even includes the late, great John Lennon, apparently living in a remote cottage overlooking the sea, claiming that life is not that complicated. A world without The Beatles? Imagine…
Curtis’s screenplay is endearing for the most part, but does get a bit… well, Richard Curtis-y, in the end (remember, this is the man who brought us Love, Actually and Four Weddings And A Funeral), but the capable hands of Danny Boyle rein in the script’s most mawkish moments. The central theme is an unrequited love story between Jack (a struggling musician) and his maths teacher/manager childhood gal-pal, Ellie (Lily James), who has always encouraged him to pursue his musical career. The setting is small-town Suffolk where, after a collision with a bus while riding home one night during a global power outage, Jack finds himself in hospital nursing a sore head and a few bruises and minus two front teeth. The 12-second, unexplained blackout, combined with the accident, has apparently somehow left him as the only person on the planet who remembers The Beatles, Harry Potter and Coca-Cola, even cigarettes. Imagine, again… He adopts The Beatles songbook as his own and is soon invited by Ed Sheeran (playing himself) to become his support act on a forthcoming tour. This leads to a meeting with a cynical American music agent, Debra Hammer (Kate McKinnon), who openly admits to living off the proceeds of her clients by ripping off their earnings, and who wants to push him into another realm - to make him the most successful recording artist of all time. But he’ll have to leave Ellie behind.
This is a crazy, creative ride that has some really funny moments which are a treat to watch. Jack’s perpetually stoned roadie, Rocky (Joel Fry), gives us a clue to what we’re in for early in Yesterday when he tells Jack that he is “trying to live outside the traditional concept of time.” Patel is a fine performer and he delivers The Beatles songs beautifully, only slightly toying with their original arrangements. There are some great characters, including Malik’s parents (played by Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar) and the aforementioned Rocky (Joel Fry), who is a totally loose cannon but fits in nicely with this make-believe world. It’s a place that exists as an alternate universe, like film itself. As Danny Boyle says, “you can crush time or expand it, you can do wondrous things with cinema.” In Yesterday, he and Curtis take us on a journey that makes you question, what if…? There’s a nice dig at Oasis, too. After all, if there were no Beatles, it stands to reason that we wouldn’t have had the Gallaghers either. Imagine that!
Screenwriter: Richard Curtis, based on an original screenplay by Jack Barth and Mackenzie Crook.
Principal cast:
Himesh Patel
Lily James
Joel Fry
Meera Syal
Sanjeev Bhaskar
Kate McKinnon
Ed Sheeran
Country: UK/USA
Classification: M
Runtime: 116 mins.
Australian release date: 27 June 2019
Previewed: In season at Verona Cinema, Sydney.
Yesterday, directed by Danny Boyle, was selected as the closing night film at this year’s Sydney Film Festival. It is a tribute to The Beatles and is a fun-filled, far-fetched experience that reminds you just how brilliant the ‘Fab Four’s’ songs are and how they have survived, and will survive, the test of time. They wrote music that will still be listened to far into the future. The film toys with the idea that the group never actually existed, except through the eyes of the film’s protagonist, Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), and one or two others. It even includes the late, great John Lennon, apparently living in a remote cottage overlooking the sea, claiming that life is not that complicated. A world without The Beatles? Imagine…
Curtis’s screenplay is endearing for the most part, but does get a bit… well, Richard Curtis-y, in the end (remember, this is the man who brought us Love, Actually and Four Weddings And A Funeral), but the capable hands of Danny Boyle rein in the script’s most mawkish moments. The central theme is an unrequited love story between Jack (a struggling musician) and his maths teacher/manager childhood gal-pal, Ellie (Lily James), who has always encouraged him to pursue his musical career. The setting is small-town Suffolk where, after a collision with a bus while riding home one night during a global power outage, Jack finds himself in hospital nursing a sore head and a few bruises and minus two front teeth. The 12-second, unexplained blackout, combined with the accident, has apparently somehow left him as the only person on the planet who remembers The Beatles, Harry Potter and Coca-Cola, even cigarettes. Imagine, again… He adopts The Beatles songbook as his own and is soon invited by Ed Sheeran (playing himself) to become his support act on a forthcoming tour. This leads to a meeting with a cynical American music agent, Debra Hammer (Kate McKinnon), who openly admits to living off the proceeds of her clients by ripping off their earnings, and who wants to push him into another realm - to make him the most successful recording artist of all time. But he’ll have to leave Ellie behind.
This is a crazy, creative ride that has some really funny moments which are a treat to watch. Jack’s perpetually stoned roadie, Rocky (Joel Fry), gives us a clue to what we’re in for early in Yesterday when he tells Jack that he is “trying to live outside the traditional concept of time.” Patel is a fine performer and he delivers The Beatles songs beautifully, only slightly toying with their original arrangements. There are some great characters, including Malik’s parents (played by Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar) and the aforementioned Rocky (Joel Fry), who is a totally loose cannon but fits in nicely with this make-believe world. It’s a place that exists as an alternate universe, like film itself. As Danny Boyle says, “you can crush time or expand it, you can do wondrous things with cinema.” In Yesterday, he and Curtis take us on a journey that makes you question, what if…? There’s a nice dig at Oasis, too. After all, if there were no Beatles, it stands to reason that we wouldn’t have had the Gallaghers either. Imagine that!