I went to see “Yesterday” in theatres expecting to either love it or hate it. The concept, after all, is both deeply disturbing and, for a story, kind of thrilling – what if the Beatles (as in my favourite band ever) had never existed?
How would the movie handle this premise? Would they do it tastefully? I could see this as being either one of the best movies ever, or one of the worst. In any case, I had to see it for myself.
So I went into this movie, and I came out feeling slightly let-down, a little disturbed (double-checking the Beatles T-shirt I was wearing to make sure they do still exist), and a little as though I had been entertained. I didn't love it. I didn't hate it. The movie was just – okay. Like, nothing special. Nothing too radical or different, even, though with a plot concept like that it definitely should have been. Good, but not great.
The basic premise: Jack is a struggling musician in 2010s England trying to make it big in his chosen industry, along with help and support from his friend and manager, Ellie. (Surprisingly, she was not already his girlfriend; I had gotten the impression from the trailers that she would be.) After a biking accident and a mysterious twelve-second worldwide blackout, Jack wakes up to a seemingly normal world, only to slowly realize that no one besides him remembers the Beatles anymore – or their songs. Seizing his chance, Jack begins to pass off the Beatles' songs as his own original creations and quickly generates a lot of attention and fame... but there are complications.
To begin with its good points, the movie was funny, and had a pretty light feel to it despite the serious plot concept. The premise is engaging and the beginning does a good job of introducing us to our main character and making us root for him. Within the first few scenes of the film, I really wanted Jack to succeed (as a fellow musician, this was unsurprising). The parts just after he finds out that nobody knows what he is talking about when he mentions the Beatles are amusing, like when he goes and Googles any number of concepts to do with the Fab Four, trying to find some word of them online. (Although I felt at the same time like they should do more to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation in these scenes, especially with the movie aimed at Beatles fans.) We get a number of very good Beatles covers (though of course nothing can live up to the original recordings), so the soundtrack was great. The movie had a great deal of potential and original ideas to explore, and so many directions it could take these ideas. How guilty will Jack feel about passing off other people's songs as his own, and will this guilt affect his ability to continue as a musician? What was this mysterious worldwide blackout? How exactly did it change the Beatles' history to prevent them from coming together? Where are the Beatles now, and what are they doing if they never became, well, the Beatles? How has the world been affected by the removal of this most influential band? What wonderful things have never happened because the Beatles never set the ball in motion? How will the Beatles finally return to the world and restore balance? And how will this whole journey ultimately affect Jack's goal of making it big?
If we want to know all this, we will be disappointed.
It was somewhere in the middle of the movie that my interest began to slip, just about the time when Ellie tearfully asks Jack why she never ended up in the “And I Love Her” category (admittedly a clever way of telling Jack she has feelings for him) and I realized that while I came in here to watch a movie about the Beatles, I was actually watching a trashy romance. At this point, instead of answering any of the pressing questions mentioned above, the movie goes into this wholly unnecessary “will they or won't they” which does nothing but detract from the plot and take time away from the story I actually came here to see. It almost felt as though, halfway through, the movie realized they had no idea what to do with a complex idea like the Beatles never existing and how that would affect the world of music, the world in general, or Jack's personal character arc, and just wrote a clichéd love story. Eventually the “romance” was the only plot point they seemed truly concerned with resolving, despite the all-important point that the Beatles have disappeared from the world, which by the way is never resolved, and seems to me a little more important than whether this man and woman who are all wrong for each other get married or not. Especially as the Beatles' disappearance from history was supposed to be the whole point of the movie in the first place, all the marketing for the movie talked about this premise, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who absolutely hate trashy romances went to see this movie because they were misinformed about what to expect.
Oddly,in Yesterday's world, the Beatles' disappearance doesn't really seem to have affected anything, as there was almost nothing in this movie about the butterfly effect. The music of the 2010s, the entire world of the 2010s, is no different from how Jack remembers it, except for a few small details like cigarettes and Coca-Cola no longer existing. Oh, and John is still alive. So basically what they're saying is the Beatles had no impact on life and we could have done just as well without them, and that the only changes their disappearance from our world could possibly have made are for the better. Oh, I don't believe they actually meant it to come out that way. I think this movie just had a very poor grasp on the concept that if you take one thing out of history it will affect other things, and that if you want to write a proper tribute to the Beatles their disappearance should actually have an impact on the world. Just like I don't think they meant to be insulting when they implied that anyone with decent musical ability who brought the Beatles' incredible songs to the world would have made exactly the same sort of impact. There were just so many factors to the Beatles besides the music– not least that it was their music and they would be able to understand and lend an emotion to it that no one else could. There's the times, the music scene they entered into and the audience they were marketed towards, the order their songs were released (why was Jack suggesting all these later-years Beatles album names for his debut, when the Beatles themselves started off with Please Please Me?), their camaraderie, their personalities, the way the four of them worked together – their great good looks, and yes, I do think this is a valid part of the package and not something that should be considered “unimportant” – and that magical energy of all those factors combining together to make the perfect band. I don't believe that you could take the chords and melodies and lyrics the Beatles wrote, put them in some random musician's hands, release them in any old era in any old order, and expect it to have the same impact as it did for the Fab Four.
Of course, I can understand how the concept would have been daunting – it'd be pretty much impossible to accurately predict just how the world would have changed without the Beatles in it. But I mean – couldn't they have at least tried to guess how things might have gone differently if the Beatles had never rocked the world? At least they could have changed the music world if they weren't prepared to change anything else! At one point of the movie, Jack Googles the Rolling Stones, noting with relief that at least they still exist in this strange new reality. But would they have still existed, at least in the same way, if George had never used his Beatle status to get them a recording contract? And of course the Beatles' absence would have affected their sound and inspiration! At another point in the movie, Jack meets modern musician Ed Sheeran, whose music sounds exactly the same as it does in our reality. But the Beatles impacted the music world so greatly that it seems very unlikely anybody's music would still be the same as in real life. Who knows if we would even still have the same genres we do today? Maybe new genres would have developed instead that we've never even heard of; maybe without our innovative Beatles the music world would have gone stagnant. Who knows? So much there to explore, so much potential wasted....
There was also precious little in the movie about moral conflict, which was surprising to say the least. Jack's whole career is taking off, the fame he's always wanted is finally happening, but everything he has comes from passing off other people's songs as his own. Just how bad is it to pretend another person's song is your own when the other person never wrote the song? Is it worse to hide all these great works of art from the world or to take undue credit for them? Are they still great works of art when all you can give people is covers? Are these even the Beatles' songs anymore, considering in this new timeline the Beatles never got together and never wrote them? I didn't really get a sense of moral conflict from Jack, or from the movie in general, which seems to me should have been one of the most major plot points. There was actually a plot thread in which Jack meets two other people who also remember the Beatles from before they disappeared, and I was honestly surprised that both of them just congratulated Jack on bringing their music back to the world and that was the end of it. I might have liked to see all three of them have different ideas about what the right thing to do is in this case, adding another layer to the moral conflict. Maybe they could be angry at him for not giving the Beatles proper credit, or disappointed in his rendition of their songs. Or maybe now that Jack knows other people who remember the Beatles too, they can become like his lifeline, the only ones he can really talk to because they remember the same reality he does. They could have all gone on a quest to find the Beatle members and see if they can somehow fix what went wrong with the blackout and bring the Beatles back to the present day! As it is, I felt these characters were really underplayed. A lot of the other supporting cast we do see more of felt a bit like stock characters: the funny screwup best friend (although I did like him), the cold businessperson who only cares about making money (why they can't show us a character who cares about making money and also cares about other things....), and the sweet guy Ellie basically uses by getting into a relationship with him to make Jack feel guilty about not being in a relationship with her.
I could not bring myself to like Ellie, for some indiscernible reason Jack's love interest. I mean, I get it. She's been in love with Jack since she was a teenager, supported him through all his struggles and lack of success, and I do believe she genuinely wanted him to succeed back then, genuinely thought she would be happy for him and be able to adapt to his new life when that happened. But then he actually does succeed, becoming an international superstar, and Ellie realizes she can't handle his new life, can't live in a world like that. This despite the fact that she and Jack had planned this arrangement ages ago, that she would be his manager once he made it big, but in her defense, maybe she didn't know what she was getting herself into and only realized now that it's happening that this path isn't for her. A little disappointing that she has to let Jack down, but it's Ellie's right to decide how she wants to live, and whether a certain lifestyle is right for her. But then she starts to take it out on Jack, effectively telling him that he shouldn't be so famous because she won't be able to handle it, making him feel guilty for achieving his dreams, implying he should only ever live a life that she feels comfortable in. How is it Ellie's right to tell anyone else how to live?! I don't care how long she's been in love with Jack; Ellie has a choice now: adjust to Jack's new lifestyle and build a life with him, or realize she and he just won't work together and begin the process of letting go. But telling Jack that he has to change and give up his dreams for her – no. Just no. No one should ever have to compromise their own life's goals to make another person comfortable, and Ellie's happiness is not Jack's responsibility – especially as they aren't even actually a couple. Unfortunately, the movie does not take this viewpoint, and in the end Jack gives in, gives up everything, gets a nice safe job as a music teacher – oh, but it's okay, because he marries selfish, manipulative Ellie. The worst part is that the movie with this ending and message is cited as a “feel-good” movie. So it feels good to watch a character we've grown to like and root for give up his dreams and settle for a mediocre life?? Just think how this concept would have been received with the genders reversed – if Jack were a woman with big dreams finally about to achieve everything she'd been working towards, and Ellie were a man in love with her who wanted her to give up everything because he couldn't handle that level of success. Nobody would be rooting for Ellie in this scenario. They'd probably say he was a jerk and that Jack deserves someone who will appreciate her. So why is this plotline okay, and even cited as “feel-good”, when it's a woman persuading a man to give up his life's goals?? If they wanted Ellie to be pressuring Jack into giving this all up, why not have her remember Jack saying these are songs from a band called the Beatles (which he does back before he realizes that no one remembers them), and tell him it's not right to take credit for them? It would have made a much better motive for the tension between the two of them, actually having relevance to the plot and turning Ellie into a much more likeable character.
There's a scene near the end of the movie where Jack meets John Lennon, who in this new scenario never became famous and is still alive. It was immensely powerful to see him as part of this movie, a concept they should have given much more attention to if you ask me. John is living a lonely but happy life away from society and mentions a long happy marriage to his wife (I notice they played it very safe and never indicated whether said wife was Yoko or Cynthia or someone else entirely). This was one of the most emotionally engaging parts of the movie, and I thought, why stop there? Why not go all out and show us all four Beatles as they are in this new reality? If the real Paul and Ringo didn't want to be in the movie, they could find actors like they did for John, and if cigarettes never existed, George would still be alive too, so no excuses! I think we all expected Paul and Ringo to be in the movie, thanks to the trailer teasing us with that whole “Here are two men who claim they wrote your songs” moment, that turned out only to be in Jack's head – and very confusingly done, I might add; it took me a whole minute to figure out why we weren't hearing any more of this most pivotal plot point. (Thanks a lot for getting our hopes up, Yesterday trailer.) The worst part of all this is the wasted potential – there was so much they could do with the Beatle members also remembering that these are their songs and confronting Jack about it, and it would have made a great climax which could then lead the movie to a proper resolution, not one where Jack decides to give up everything for Ellie, become a music teacher and raise a couple of kids, and live a nice safe comfortable life that never gives him the chance to rise to his full potential. Play it small, stay in your comfort zone, let other people tell you how to live your life – are these the messages we want our audiences to hear???
If I were to rewrite the ending for this movie, I would have definitely had the natural order of the world be restored and the Beatles return to their rightful place in history, maybe due to a chain reaction caused by the onetime Beatle members hearing Jack's covers of their songs and having memories stir inside them, or through the combined efforts of Jack and those other two people who remember the Beatles. And everything goes back to normal. Except for one thing – after having tasted success with songs he already knows will be big hits, Jack has gained much more confidence in his abilities as a singer-songwriter and is now finally able to find success with his own songs, now with no moral conflict this time as these are genuinely his. Ellie I would have had as his girlfriend throughout the entire thing without any of this silly will-they-or-won't-they, and if there was any conflict between the two, it would be about the morality of passing off another person's song as your own, not about her being upset because he finally has the life he always wanted.
Overall, the movie was enjoyable to watch, but I won't be running out to see it again – which is a pity because done right, this could have joined the ranks of the Beatles movies, kind of like The Rutles, which doesn't star the Beatles but still gives you a healthy dose of Beatlemania.
My final rating:
Yesterday, 2019 – 3 out of 5 stars, enjoyable, for the most part amusing, but with some very damaging morals underneath the lighthearted exterior. Go ahead and give it a watch, but be aware that this movie is not the Beatlemania fest you were probably expecting.
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