Last year, I visited the treasure trove of nostalgia that is Cavern Club in Liverpool. Walking down the winding, spiralling stairs to the basement that echoed with joyous, exuberant covers of many a classic chartbuster (and tittering irreverently at a bamboozled lady to a song about Lucy and diamonds), I found myself eventually thronged on all sides by fellow worshippers of the extraordinary, still melodious music of four legendary Liverpudlians, a winsome blend of grinning old-timers and bright young things, all dancing and swaying to the eclectic tunes being played by a mop-topped singer, from the earliest pop subversion of Ticket To Ride and Help! to the roaring politics of Revolution and Get Back.
Indeed, how can one imagine a world without the Beatles? The very thought is not merely preposterous; it is horrifying in just how much it would rob us all of not just there music but the overwhelmingly emotional impact that they have left on us all, uniting Beatlemaniacs across the globe, like me from India and a couple of friendly beer-chugging men who greeted me and hailed from Sweden, in a religion. That would mean that Yesterday, in the hands of a different filmmaker or writer, would qualify for a horror story, a tale of the most depressing dystopia.
And so, it is a marvel that, in the hands of director Danny Boyle and writer Richard Curtis, the film becomes such a charming, delightfully frothy romantic comedy that, despite a premise that aims consciously for inevitability, even predictability, has still plenty of wit and even subversion and delicious insight crammed into the most unexpected corners.
Jack Mallik, an Indian-British lad, is an aspiring musician who is no longer feeling fine about his chances to make it big. Nobody really cares about his gigs in good old Suffolk and even as his best friend, the vivacious Ellie, does everything to help him out as a de facto manager, he is ready to throw in the towel. That is until one evening when the world blacks out in the space of a handful of seconds and his bicycle is slammed by a bus. Having lost a few teeth in the accident, Jack tries to remain upbeat and casually asks Ellie if she will still feed him when he is 64. She does not quite get it.
There is something to be said about the subtle, confidently stoic narrative sleight of hand that Boyle and Curtis use to let the gravity of the new situation sink in. When gifted a gleaming new guitar, the first song that Jack can think to sing, about how all his troubles were far away the day before, makes everybody listening shut up, stirred and shaken, just as you might have felt when you first heard that rousing voice and those sad strings. It is the greatest heartbreak song ever written or sung and yet while Jack's friends are understandably gobsmacked, they cannot believe that a group of men named after insects or those cute Volkswagen automobiles actually sung and recorded it first. To them, in hindsight, it is not quite Coldplay.
You can imagine Jack's startled predicament then. He rushes home and soon Boyle plugs the narrative on a live-wire of quirky, nutty comedy. Google informs our hapless, non-plussed protagonist that the Beatles are actually beetles and that John Paul George and Ringo actually means Pope John Paul II. Destiny seems to have delivered a strange miracle for this struggler and he lunges at the chance unabashedly, as Yesterday makes us wonder: does he do it for fame or does he do his bit to preserve all he can remember about those geniuses who wrote those incredible songs?
Boyle and Curtis are clearly interested in the latter which is why so much of Yesterday comes across as splendidly, ingeniously clever. The invisible but all-too-palpable influence of the iconoclast band on how we imagine the highs and lows of love is what this film portrays so successfully. Even the stand-alone sequences and visuals are written and filmed with devilishly wicked wit; when recording She Loves You, Jack and Ellie hold for that pause as a suburban train rattles outside.
Then, later on, discord between them stems less from Jack finding his footing at the top of the pops and more from Ellie wondering, openly, as to what place does she hold in his life apart from being his intrepid manager for so long. It is a sweet sugary romance at heart that is nevertheless crisp to the taste in the most unexpected ways, like one of those crowd-pleasing McCartney song made a little edgier with Lennon's unmistakably sharper wit as well.
But Yesterday also does not forget George and Ringo; this is a thoughtful enough film that ponders big enough questions, like Jack tormented by the moral integrity of his ascent to stardom by accident or him pushed to a corner in one scene and most memorably and literally crying out for help when he faces the prospect of losing Ellie too. For all the weightier elements that the film explores, much of it is nevertheless a deliciously unhinged lark, in the charmingly old-school style of Ealing comedies. Ed Sheeran shows up in a snarky, hilarious cameo as a preening, Salieri-esque celebrity version of himself who advises Jack, rather disastrously, to sing Dude instead of Jude. And Kate McKinnon hams rather enjoyably as a bloodthirsty American record producer who cannot quite understand Jack's besotted admiration for his own material.
Newcomer Himesh Patel is quite a treat as the suitably perturbed Jack, blending an every-guy sense of earnestness into a very credible foil of derring do that compels him to plunge headfirst into the baffling world of fame and fanfare. Cast against him is the beautiful, beautiful Lily James, an actress who is only getting more evocative and effervescent with each subsequent role, as Ellie. She is vulnerable, quirky, messed-up, confident all at the same time and both the lead share a sparkling chemistry that makes their romance, even with its obvious simplicity, so worth rooting for.
All you need is love, the boys sang once so memorably. The film believes in that universally appealing message in manifold ways. At one level, Yesterday is about the love we all share for those very boys and just how much of their incredible legacy cannot be imitated or even bettered; watch out for a scene in which everyone gives up trying to replicate those extraordinary album covers or for that scene in which Jack cannot quite get how to cover Eleanor Rigby. And yet, on a deeper, more heartfelt level, it is about the one thing that the group always stood for: following your heart and pursuing what or whom you love till the end of the world. There is even a cosmically special appearance by a true legend that makes your heart stop for a second and then makes a Cheshire grin of wish-fulfilment bloom on your face.
Boyle, God bless him, has made a winsome film that celebrates not only the greatest musical group of the world in all its magical glory but also the heady thrill of falling in love and fighting for the same against the allure of destiny. Like the song with the same name, Yesterday might be a simple ballad on the surface but it is undeniably profound in its ultimate impact. We should not forget that the Beatlemania began with a memorable song about only holding hands.
My Rating: 4 Stars Out Of 5
