Movie Reaction: Yesterday

Formula: About Time / The Invention of Lying

 

In one of my favorite scenes in my favorite movie, Stranger Than Fiction, Harold asks his friend Dave if he knew he was going to die, what would he do with the time he had left. Dave surprises Harold by asking if, in this hypothetical, he had superpowers. Confused, Harold settles on adding invisibility. Without hesitation, Dave tells him that if he was invisible and he knew he was going to die, he'd go to Space Camp. I didn't get this scene at first. I thought it was just being played for laughs. However, what it's actually doing is cutting through the whole idea of the movie. Sometimes, the best way to get to the heart of an issue is to come at it from an absurd angle. Ultimately, Dave needs to be invisible to realize his dream of going to Space Camp. Harold needs to hear the voice of Karen Eiffel narrating his life to realize that his life is in a numbers-driven funk. This isn't a new form of storytelling that Zack Helm discovered in 2006. It's a common device. The entirety of Science Fiction is based on the idea that if you hide an idea in something extraordinary, people more readily let their guards down so you can hit them with a lesson.

The same high concept approach is central to another of my favorite movies: About Time. Richard Curtis sells that movie on the idea that it's about an English ginger who learns that the men in his family have the ability to travel back in time. He doesn't use this to tell a butterfly effect story though. He establishes a few basic rules then lets his protagonist, Tim, do what he wants with the power. The movie turns into a story about appreciating what you have in your life while you have it. Tim's superpower doesn't even matter, because all he wants is to live a happy life with his family and friends.

This of course leads me to another Richard Curtis penned movie: the one this Reaction is actually for. It's another high-concept movie about a pathetic young British man, also with a power of sorts, who is forced to reevaluate the priorities in his life. Himesh Patel plays Jack Malick, an aspiring singer-songwriter who has met one too many indifferent crowd. On the same night that he decides to give up on his musical dream, the lights go out across the world for 12 seconds and he is hit by a bus. When he wakes up, he realizes that he's the only person who still remembers The Beatles. He finds out a few other things don't exist, but the world is otherwise the same. He knows the same people. Technology is the same. Just, no Beatles. He uses this as his big chance. He "writes" all the Beatles songs he can remember and claims them as his own. It doesn't take long for him to be discovered, and he's faced with the decision to go on to fame and fortune or stay behind for his longtime friend and manager (Lily James), who has always fancied Jack but doesn't share his big dreams.

On paper, Yesterday has all the things I could want from a movie. I'm a sucker for Richard Curtis' sentimentality. It's a movie filled with gentle humor, where even the bad guys (notably, Kate McKinnon as Jack's scene-stealing, emotionally blunt manager) are only a nuisance and everyone else is genuinely kind. One of my favorite details in the movie is when Jack is at the peak of his newfound popularity, one of his friends from the very beginning is still holding up a sign for him to play one of his songs from before the accident: one that Jack actually wrote. There's even something simple and sweet about the idea that, equipped with 50 year old music, Jack could become a rockstar, or that Lily James' Ellie can so deeply believe in him. It helps that I also like The Beatles' music. I was excited to see this movie, because I knew that even the worst version of it would leave me in a good mood. I need more movies like that.

My favorite parts of both Stranger Than Fiction and About Time aren't the parts about the high concept premise. I like Harold Crick's scenes the best when he's driving his own story. I like when Tim uses his powers for an honest moment, not to deceive. Sadly, I still like Yesterday the best for the music. My problems with the story actually have little to do with the premise. The version of the music industry that Jack has a meteoric rise in rings false in every way. The movie makes him into a music star of 1969 (or maybe 1999) despite it being 2019. It never bothers to justify Jack as a character. Ellie believes strongly in him, but I'm never sure why. She loves his music and his dream, but the movie doesn't seem to like him as a musician and she punishes him for following his dream. By the time the movie ends with him making his decision about what really matters to him, it's not really backed up by anything that happened before it.

The best version of Yesterday is all about going to Space Camp. This version, has trouble getting past being invisible. 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend