Yesterday Review

Yesterday was directed by Danny Boyle and stars Himesh Patel, Lilly James, Kate Mackinnon and Ed Sheeran.

The film is about a struggling musician who, after being in an accident, wakes up to discover no one remembers the music of the Beatles apart from him. So, understandably, he claims their songs as his own, takes the credit and gets all the recognition - while also achieving the level of fame he has always dreamed of. But could he run the risk of being exposed as a fraud? Or worse, losing the love of his life?

The performances were fine, Patel and James both do good jobs of portraying likeable everyday people, and they do have a believable chemistry together. But they are in the end forgettable. MacKinnon seems like the film's source of comic relief, and I thought she did a very good job with her character, she was funny and kept the film entertaining when things started to slow down, and through it was a small part she certainly made the most of it. Lastly Sheeran's work in the film didn't seem as much like a performance as a marketing ploy to get younger audiences in. And when he is on screen he just shows up, says a few lines that don't advance the plot, then goes away. And it's like that with Sheeran every few minutes for the whole runtime.

The film was written by Richard Curtis and it's clear that he has written it with the intention of it being a romantic comedy with a success story and a twist to give it some distinction from his previous work. There are some moments where that has slightly paid off, but despite its interesting concept and ambitions, it's very predictable after a while, there is nothing you don't see coming, and it just gets tiresome as you wait in vain for a truly interesting idea to reach its full potential.

The film was shot by Christopher Ross and there are some noteworthy moments, one being a surprising overuse of Dutch angles that felt out of place in a romantic comedy. Those kinds of angles are usually used in action movies to give the viewer a feeling of unease. I also thought it was somewhat interesting that while the main character is struggling to remember Beatles lyrics, we are shown an exact image of what it is he is saying. And on a slightly negative note, the blackout sequence which sets up the film's main events (Patel going slowly through the blackness) feel like nothing more than a recycled, and less impressive, version of a similar sequence from the 2017 horror film, Get Out. I doubt that it was anyone's intention to make the scenes similar, but when you look at the two, it's hard not to notice.

The music was composed by Daniel Pemberton, and unfortunately it didn't stand out to me at all. I was more concerned with what would happen with the Beatles songs. Firstly, Patel manages to sing the songs moderately well, but there's one very jarring alteration made to one of the songs that just comes off as desperation. It's as if someone  had no idea what to do with all the rights to all of this music so they ended up doing the first thing they could think of, but without actually thinking it through.

The one flaw that really damaged my experience with this film, is that in the world where the film takes place, where the Beatles never existed, there are moments where it's mentioned in passing that several other familiar things don't exist either. I think this movie would have been far more interesting had this aspect been explored further, if there had been several things taken out of existence instead of just one. I certainly feel like that was the even better film trying to get out of this one.

The conclusions I draw from this are that: Yesterday has average performances; an ambitious  but predictable script; some interesting ideas in the cinematography, plus one shot that seems recycled from another film; an unmemorable score with unwarranted alterations made to beloved songs; and a flaw that if it had proper attention paid to it, perhaps could have been used productively to make a better film.

Having taken all my pros and cons into account, I'm going to give Yesterday...

C

Thank you for reading.