One of the biggest cinematic (to misappropriate a word – celluloid would be better, but equally misappropriate in this digital streaming age) surprises in the last 12 months has been the film ‘Yesterday’.
A pleasing story (slightly dodgy 3rd act, but the rest of the film carries it over that bump with ease), solid production values, cute casting, believable acting and a delicious soundtrack.
Yesterday is one of ‘those’ films, it made me sit back and go ‘Ahhhh!’ the first time I saw it. And the second time. And the third time.
The story outline is that a competent but stunningly unsuccessful singer/songwriter (Jack Malik, played well by Himesh Patel) has an accident that either causes or is caused by a global energy blackout. During this blackout Jack Malik has an unfortunate but not serious bicycle accident. At the moment of the global energy blackout, the rest of the world has its historical timeline rewritten, and The Beatles (and therefore – amusingly – Oasis) are edited out.
What would you do, as a competent but unsuccessful singer/songwriter? Would you fill the void? Would you (re)write The Beatles back-catalogue? And would you remain true to the production values of John, Paul, George, Ringo and the other George (Martin)?
The answers to these questions, and many more, may be found in this film. I enjoyed it.
The 11-year old is learning much of The Beatles catalogue on one of my guitars. This evening she began learning Eleanor Rigby (a pivotal song in this film).
After her Skype lesson I played the song on Spotify. And we danced to it, around the lounge, like a pair of loons. And we sang the lyrics and performed theatrical motions to the words.
And then we did it again.
We’re going to have to watch Yesterday again soon.
That’s one I wanted to see at the cinema, but never got round to it.
Did you watch it on DVD or is it streaming somewhere?
I miss not being able to go to the cinema and openly weep in the company of strangers who can’t see me. But anyway. Yes, we bought it on Amazon.