Film of the Week: Yesterday

Offering a fresh take on what it’s like to be an up-incoming singer, going from struggling to book anywhere to a household overnight. What makes this different than most other success stories, is that the artists whose music is involved in this film, never wrote the songs. The Beatles never formed, leaving up to Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) to take advantage of this sudden change in the world and earn the success he’s been struggling to achieve for so long – except when he feels guilty for stealing their music – even though, technically, he hasn’t stolen anything, but instead jeopardised his friendship with his long friend and manager, Ellie Appleton (Lily James), and potential relationship.

Written by Richard Curtis and directed by Danny Boyle, this romantic comedy gives us what we’ve had for many years, but also something new. The Beatles music has inspired so many over the years, changed the face of music forever, and will influence many more to come. Whilst it made sense to keep it confined to the exploration of how success can put a strain on friendships and relationships, the overall package the Beatles gave to the world wasn’t explored to its full potential. It put the strain on the character’s friendship long before the songs changed the world the way it has in our one. Richard did a good job with building a strong foundation by making the world not know other well-known brands, such as Coke, Harry Potter, and Cigarettes, to give us an insight that it’s not only the Beatles’ music which had been forgotten. It would make the story too busy and complicated to attempt to implement Jack trying to create all that the world has forgotten, so sticking with just the Beatles’ music isn’t a complaint, but there was a lot the film set up within the music world alone, but didn’t deliver. The very influence of the Beatles’ music inspired this film, so to not include Jack going through the sensation of being that grand of an influencer, felt like a miss.

The film we were given to by Richard Curtis and Danny Boyle is a charming and classic British romantic comedy, with Richard Curtis being one of the greatest British screenwriters of our generation, having penned multiple, extremely successful romantic comedies and had an important hand in creating Blackadder and Mr Bean, two staples of British comedy, we basically state they define what we know to be our comedy from those two shows. Danny Boyle has directed many powerful films, including 127 hours, and made sure the British 2012 Olympic opening ceremony went from beginning to end without a glitch. Two greats in British cinema coming together, with talented actors, it’s already a massive film before you even watch it, so you won’t be disappointed.

I laughed and applauded Jack’s intentions at the end of the film, realising that after giving the world what they had lost – or rather what they had never known – it was time to settle down and be happy in this new world. Whilst it does feel like there could have been more involved with the story, what we got was persuasive enough.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)