Yesterday
Directed by Danny Boyle
Story by Jack Barth (and Mackenzie Crook)
Screenplay by Richard Curtis
Himesh Patel – Jack Malik
Lily James – Ellie Appleton, Jack’s first manager
Ed Sheeran – himself
Kate McKinnon – Debra Hammer, his agent
Meera Syal – Sheila Malik, Jack’s mum
Sanjeev Bhaskar – Jed Malik, Jack’s dad
Joel Fry- Rocky, Jack’s friend and roadie
Alexander Arnold – Gavin, his first producer
Robert Carlyle as John Lennon
Sophie Di Martino- Carol
Ellise Chappell – Lucy
Harry Mitchell – Nick
Vincent Franklin – Brian
James Corden as himself
Michael Kiwanuka as himself
It’s a great idea. A world without Beatle songs discovering them anew. It’s not original. The idea comes in the TV sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart (59 episodes from 1993 on) written by Maurice Gran and Laurence Marks. Gary Sparrow, played by Nicholas Lyndhurst, finds a time portal behind his present day shop to the same alleyway in the early 1940s in the blitz. It’s a lovely idea leading to a double life flitting between eras, with a wife (Michelle Holmes) in one and a girlfriend (Dervla Kirwan) in the other. The 1940 sequences centre around a pub with a piano and singalongs, and Gary joins in and treats them to a few 1960s songs, especially Beatles songs, claiming that he wrote them. He also did My Way, On The Street Where You Live and The Times They Are A Changing. He memorably covered The Smiths Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now while auditioning for Noel Coward. His first two Beatles songs (Series 1, Episode3) were Imagine and Yesterday, with Yesterday being the screamingly obvious one and it appeared three times in the series as the pub favourite.
Goodnight Sweetheart – same idea, 1993
But as I said, a great idea. I was keen to see it … see my review of the great Beatles covers movie, Across The Universe.
You have that one simple premise for sci-fi. Jack is a singer / songwriter in Lowestoft, Suffolk who gets hit by a bus during a sudden global electrical blackout. When he wakes up, recovers, and sings the title song Yesterday to friends, he realizes that the world has shifted and no one now knows the Beatles. When Paul McCartney composed the song he had people running around the music publishers because the melody was so strong he thought he must have inadvertently borrowed it. He hadn’t. But it’s an apt choice. As it turns out, Oasis and Wonderwall was also lost (great joke), as well as other major things – I won’t spoil the laughs by naming them. All are funny.
Yesterday: Jack (Himesh Patel) and Ellie (Lily James)
Lily James is Ellie, in love with Jack. She’s a maths teacher as well as his first manager, and dresses appropriately in frocks. She retains her Cinderella magic in a much more ordinary girl-next-door role. Jack used to be a teacher too, and they’ve known each other since they were seven, and carried a hidden and unrequited torch since they were seventeen. Now she’s manager and roadie, and Jack has a dead-end day job in a discount warehouse. He is unsuccessful with his own songs, then hugely excited at playing The Latitude festival, and ends up performing to four bored kids and an old couple in a tent. I’ve seen that at festivals, and at ELT conferences.
Jack’s parents are the sub-continent dream team of Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal and the re-watchable section is Jack vainly trying to play them his “new” song Let It Be to countless interruptions and indifference. As with Lily James, they have mild Suffolk accents.
Hiresh Patel as Jack Malik
The point is that Jack performs virtually all the songs solo with acoustic guitar, electric guitar or piano. It’s important that he’s good, but not THAT good. No star backing band or orchestra intrudes. I bought the soundtrack CD, and they did cheat in an invisible bass guitar at points, but they avoided the old movies cliché where someone starts singing with solo guitar and gradually a 40 piece orchestra swells in to back them.
In his first recording session with Gavin (Alexander Arnold) for an EP Tracks on The Tracks, Elli (Lily James) joins him on vocals and various percussion instruments, including clapping in rubber gloves. I Want to Hold Your Hand is credited to both on the CD. Gavin’s studio is an old railway station and sessions are interrupted by passing trains. It reminded me of a spoken voice studio we once used near Wembley. It was new and we stopped constantly for aircraft noise. The owner / engineer, like Gavin, tried to convince us it was inaudible and wouldn’t record. A young Tony Robinson was on that session too. We thought Gavin’s character was a nod to Mackenzie Crook’s Swindon characters (in both The Office and Jerusalem). Crook had the original idea but was too busy to follow it up. Gavin even looked like a shorter Stephen Marchant who co-wrote the The Office Gavin becomes Ellie’s “second choice” love interest.
Jack Malik & Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran discovers Jack after an appearance on local TV and pops round to his house to ask him to be his support act. Ed Sheeran is very good indeed, playing himself without ego – entering a song-writing contest with Jack after a Moscow gig and being soundly beaten when Jack comes up with The Long and Winding Road. As Jack shoots to world super star, we have to believe that Ed would let him end Ed’s sold out Wembley concert and steal all the thunder. No way.
Kate McKinnon as Debra Hammer, top US agent
Kate McKinnon played the top American agent / Ed’s manager, Debra Hammer, brilliantly. she was so avaricious, domineering and riding roughshod over anyone’s input that I instantly identified her with more than one female American editor I’ve worked with. It is she who orders Jack that Hey, Dude is a better lyric. I loved the rejection of the one non-Beatles original Jack tries to slip in the session in LA, Summer Song. The LA sessions are for his albumOne Man Only – title chosen by Debra Hammer. As in Across The Universe, Beatles related names tempted the writers … Hammer (Maxwell’s Silver), Lucy, Brian.
Liverpool: Jack meets Ellie
Jack goes to Liverpool – he wants to introduce Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever into his setlist, so needs to appear to research it. Why would a Suffolk lad know these places and write about them? Ellie turns up, no plot spoilers but this turns into the huge romantic hinge of the story, and an ultimatum from Ellie to Jack. Joel Fry as Jack’s roadie, Rockie, is a great comedy act throughout, but especially on Lime Street Station.
One of the electric songs is Help! performed in Jack’s “Return to Gorlston” concert on the roof of the Pier Hotel, a venue that once closed before Jack got to play there in his pre-Fab days. The band sound a tad rough and thrashy, which is probably right for open air.
Help! The rooftop concert
The sci-fi premise was fast, and unexplained (cf. The Misfits TV series where an electrical storm gives some people super powers.) The thing is, two people remember also, or appear to have their memories jogged. The first is a Russian. Jack and his best mate / roadie Rockie, have flown in Ed’s private jet to do a support act for Ed Sheeran in Moscow. Jack plays Back in The USSR to massive audience response. Ed Sheeran is amazed that it was allegedly written specially on the way to Russia and that it incorporated the retro “USSR” – it’s not called that anymore, he explains. Anyway, a large Russian guy starts thinking as he watches, goes home, Googles ‘Jack Malik’ and finds the Tracks on The Tracks CD / EP that was recorded with Gavin. He looks at the track titles and recognizes them. The other is a woman who remembers and calls out ‘John, Paul, George and Ringo’ and later hands him a yellow submarine. They seem to be stalking him and I wanted to know why they remembered. I wanted to add 30 seconds explanation to the sci-fi bit. The electrical blackout was global, so being asleep was irrelevant. Jack had been knocked out in the crash. I would have added a “died for 15 seconds’ or whatever to exclude him from the memory loss, then I’d have wanted a similar explanation for the other two who recalled The Beatles. Time has shifted … Jack races home to find all his Beatles LPs and CDs have ceased to exist. He has trouble recalling words throughout.
The two who remember present Jack with the address of the 78 year old John Lennon, conveniently living on the Suffolk Coast now. Jack goes to meet him and is told that the love of Ellie is more important than wordly success … All You Need Is Love.
James Corden as himself interviews Jack – who has a nightmare flash where he imagines Paul and Ringo are about to come on.
We were charmed by the “Today …” section at the end, but I didn’t believe it. This guy was a stadium filler. Giving away all the songs from One Man Only free as a download, which he does, would only increase his appeal. After all, Spotify and the like now pay artists so very little, that live appearances are where the money is so that the free download might even be a clever idea. But he’s back with Ellie, teaching music (Ob La Di Ob La Da) in a scene very reminiscent of another favourite 1999 sitcom, The Grimleys, where Noddy Holder of Slade plays a music teacher, with his real name, Neville Holder. It’s a “solo guitar” track where the invisible bass guitar and second guitar are pretty in your face.
According to Wiki, The Beatles got £10 million upfront. For them it’s a doubly good move. We took a fifteen year old, who only knew three or four of the songs, and not well. Her friends like The Beatles, but she had never been interested. So the film might (will?) create new fans.
I loved every minute, terrific fun. I thought the two leads sparkled and had chemistry. Karen had severe doubts on sentimentality, and pointed out I give anything with Lily James in high ratings. Our 15 year old seemed a touch bored.
My scale for films” A That’s it, I’ve seen it B download and watch on Netflix C buy DVD D buy blu-ray E buy 24k UHD blu ray.
Blu-ray for me. (I’d go for UHD Blu-ray, but it’s mainly quite intimate so probably wouldn’t benefit from higher def.)
Odd fact
Both Lily James and Meera Syal were in Kenneth Branagh’s stage production of Romeo & Juliet. (MY REVIEW) Lily James was Juliet, Meera Syal (Jack’s mum here) was her nurse.
Soundtrack
It must be doing well. It’s in local supermarkets which only stock ten CDs.
I was wondering what you thought. The Lennon scene I thought was particularly good. I also liked the little nods to fans – the one that springs to mind is when he’s imaging Paul and ringo coming out to James cordons show, and Paul is barefoot – a throwback to abbey road. (And cordens carpool karaoke with McCartney is one of the best things ever). I also liked petty and jealous Ed sheeran, with the ring tone to match.
LikeLike