A struggling musician named Jack (Himesh Patel), still barely hanging onto his passion in life thanks to the unwavering support and encouragement from his best friend/manager Ellie (Lily James), gets hit by a bus and is knocked out on the night when all power mysteriously gets cut off across the globe for a minute. He wakes up in the hospital to a new reality where The Beatles never existed, and he’s the only one on the planet who remembers their songs. By introducing the world to John, Paul, George and sometimes Ringo’s genius, he becomes an overnight sensation as the greatest songwriter of all time.
Thus is Yesterday’s high-concept comedy/musical premise. Yet we all know that even the best ideas can fizzle out if not supported by a solid story structure, credible character arcs, and an intriguing examination of the themes it gives birth to. Without much thought beyond the premise, the above synopsis could work as a short story or an SNL video skit, but would probably become episodic and stale by the time we reached the second act. Even though the concept is Yesterday’s main selling point, writer Richard Curtis and director Danny Boyle use it as a springboard to create an engaging romantic comedy that’s also a heartwarming exploration of its many themes. As one might expect, Yesterday is a testament to how not only The Beatles, but great art in general, enriches the human soul and makes us grateful to be alive.
The second best scene in Yesterday—the first a third act reveal I won’t spoil here—comes when Jack randomly starts playing the title song, unaware that it’s being released into this particular universe for the first time. Boyle focuses at length on close-ups of Jack’s friends, who were expecting another pleasing but expected tune from him, only to gradually be captivated by one of the most beautiful songs of the 20th Century. Whatever distractions or worries they have at the moment visibly dissolve, until the music becomes the only thing that matters. Boyle then cuts to long shots of the beautiful English countryside while Jack sings, as the sequence somehow manages to make us feel as if we’re also listening to a song we’ve all heard a million times prior for the first time in our lives. Yesterday occasionally remembers to take a breather from the narrative flow in order to re-instill this feeling in us.
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