Yesterday (2019)

rating: *****

the story: A struggling musician suddenly finds himself in a world that doesn't remember the Beatles, and so begins claiming their songs as his own work.

review: The critics are idiots.  There's been a vocal effort to dismiss Yesterday on the basis that the specific conditions that created the success of the Beatles has to be taken into account in any attempt to sell their songs on their own merit.

Yeah.  The film does that.  But that's not even the point, is it?  The Beatles attained success, initially, as the quintessential boy band.  They wrote songs that drove the girls wild. And then they just kept evolving, and their work became wildly praised.  And then they ended, after about a decade's work.

Today, we still have boy bands.  BTS, the current model.  One Direction, started out in a reality show singing competition as individual competitors.  None of them was good enough to win on their own.  Then they were strung together, and the rest is history.  And these are just recent examples. 

Jack Malik finds initial success "stealing" the Beatles with their ballads.  Love songs are universal.  That's kind of the point.  And the Beatles wrote some damn good ones.  And not just "some."  The success of the Beatles, again, was in their ability to keep producing at a high level, and at an increasingly high level.  That was kind of the whole point. 

But he doesn't find immediate success.  His own parents treat "Let It Be" as just another cute example of their son's hopeless delusion, won't even let him get past the very beginning of the song.  And his first gig playing Beatles songs is no more successful than his previous existence clinging to material like "Summer Song" that only his good friends care anything at all about. 

But then someone hears him.  Asks him to record in a tiny private studio.  And then Ed Sheeran hears him.  And then suddenly he becomes a full-blown phenomenon.

The fact is, Yesterday is a hugely honest (until, maybe, the part where Jack decides to just walk away, regardless of circumstances, but this is gooey romance, after all, at its heart) depiction of what it takes to succeed.  It takes being noticed.  And that's not easy.  And then not just being noticed but becoming something that's easy to sell. Such as the fact that he "writes" so many instantly fantastic songs, which is what wows Sheeran (whose career the film takes for granted but may not be familiar to everyone), and what the major studio that signs Jack uses as his key selling point.  Every major act has a key selling point.  That's what sets them apart.  It might even be argued that it's not the songs themselves that suddenly makes a success of Jack, but that he knows what to do with them. 

But yes, it's also a gooey love story, which is writer Richard Curtis's trademark (I don't watch a lot of this kind of movie, but About Time is pretty magical, too), so it's really about Jack and his longtime not-quite-girlfriend Ellie.  Where Jack is played by relative unknown Himesh Patel, Ellie is portrayed by Lily James, the biggest name actor in the movie, with the possible exception of Kate McKinnon, who has been a standout in Saturday Night Live for years and has been appearing in various movies, too (probably best thing about the 2016 Ghostbusters).  Oh, and in an uncredited, brilliant cameo role as John Lennon, there's also Robert Carlyle.

The director is Danny Boyle, with a long and storied career behind him.  For me, Yesterday is a particular triumph in relation to Boyle.  I still don't know the best way to describe Slumdog Millionaire that doesn't draw uncomfortable memories of British interests in India.  But Yesterday doesn't have that problem.  Jack's ethnicity is never really dwelt on; he's just another Brit who grew up a big fan of the Beatles, and happened to be in the right place at the right time to capitalize on that.  This is "colorblind" casting at its best.  Patel didn't get the gig, presumably, to diversify the story, but because he was the best option to play Jack.  And he can sing the hell out of the Beatles, yeah.

Where 2018's A Star Is Born felt artificial, Yesterday feels organic, not because I already knew the songs, but because the artistic journey doesn't feel forced.  It doesn't hurt that the results celebrate the enduring legacy of the Beatles, and in fact that aspect of the film was largely responsible for me wanting to see the movie at all.  The movie itself rewards the premise, and moves beyond it.  What more can you ask?  This is a great film.