"Yesterday" (2019)—True Success
+Guest Posts: Movie Wisdom By Guest Writer William Collen—Issue #7
Image by L.E. Wilson from RedBubble
The Movie:
Yesterday (2019) is a comedy directed by Danny Boyle about Jack (Himesh Patel), an amateur musician who discovers that he can magically steal the music from a successful band, The Beatles, and pass it off as his own.
Life Lesson: Happiness is success, and success is happiness.
Jack: John?
John Lennon (Robert Carlyle): Yeah?
Guest Writer:
William Collen explores the arts from a Christian perspective at RUINS
What is the objective value of truth? If you could profit from a lie that no one would ever discover, would you do it? What if fate handed you the chance to reap enormous benefits just for fudging the truth and giving up on your true love? Is success more important than truth or relationships? These questions are all addressed in Danny Boyle’s 2019 film Yesterday.
Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), a failed, frustrated would-be musician, is in a predicament. Through a freak accident, he is thrown into a parallel universe where The Beatles never existed, and he is the only person on Earth who remembers their music. It dawns on him that he can pass off their songs as his own — and when he does this, the songs’ undisputed excellence propels him to instant success and fame. But the more he keeps up the facade of having written the Beatles’ songs, the more uncomfortable he becomes about living a lie.
Fame is something that Jack always wanted, though, but he has to make some hard choices in pursuit of fame — like leaving his longtime friend Ellie (Lily James), who has nursed an unrequited love for him for years. But how can she force Jack to stay by her side if it means that Jack gives up on his music career? After their final parting, Jack realizes something is seriously wrong with his life. But in the nadir of his despair, he encounters two other people who remember the Beatles — but they can’t sing, so they simply thank Jack for making the music of the Beatles accessible to the world. Jack realizes that he will never get caught in his deception, and that realization horrifies him. He manages to track down an aging John Lennon, who never was part of The Beatles and lives the life of a simple painter by the beach.
He tells Jack that happiness is the same as success, and that the key to happiness is very simple:
You want a good life? It’s not complicated. Tell the girl you love that you love her. And tell the truth to everyone, whenever you can.
Jack knows what he must do. He crashes an Ed Sheeran concert and, before a packed house at Wembley Stadium, confesses that he did not write any of the songs credited to him — and he professes his love for Ellie, who is watching backstage. His career in ruins, Jack returns to teaching at an elementary school —but he is happy now, because he knows the value of an honestly-lived life. Fame turns out to be not important at all, when valued against a life of integrity and love. Yesterday calls us to examine our priorities, and challenges us to make a decision in favor of truth.
moviewise Review:
While Yesterday (2019) explores a number of interesting issues about truth, love, and success, it is, unfortunately, a very uneven movie. The tone is off. The actors seem to be performing as if underwater. They are muffled and flat—unfeeling. Except for Kate McKinnon, who plays a tough-as-nails music manager, aptly named Debra Hammer.
The moment she steps into the frame for the first time is hilarious. Kate McKinnon is a solid actor who delivers a real character while the other actors play hackneyed, glib abstractions that fail to connect. This movie is worth watching just as a study in contrast between an actor who can reach an audience with a performance and those who are merely reciting lines for characters they don’t believe are real.
It’s a shame because there is great potential in the idea of an amateur musician, Jack (Himesh Patel), being able to access the entire Beatles catalog and claim it as his own. Anytime one has the chance to hear music from The Beatles is time well spent, so the movie has that going for it. As one of the side characters that pops up briefly says, “a world without The Beatles, is a world that’s infinitely worse.” It’s one of the truest lines in life.
At the very least, Yesterday should serve as a reminder that if you have not yet heard all The Beatles greatest hits, you should do so now. These are beautiful, poetic songs, earnest and fun, full of love. But this movie is probably not worth your time.
One of the most appalling characters in Yesterday is the love interest, Ellie, played by Lily James. This is a school teacher who essentially, and hypocritically, says that being a teacher is a waste of time. “Jack, if you go back to teaching, that is when you’ve got no choice. Yeah, because you’ll end up putting all your genius into all those kids. And then you won’t have any imagination or energy left to put into your music, which really matters.” This odious sentiment is never challenged in the movie. To see a counterpoint to this unenlightened view, please watch The School of Rock (2003), a movie about someone who truly loves music and joyfully shares his passion with school kids.
Meanwhile Ellie, the love interest and life-long friend who is also Jack’s manager, has the annoying quality of swooping in to deliver an ultimatum or otherwise cause chaos at a number of inopportune times, like when the lead character is in the middle of celebrating at his going away party or when he is in a booth at a recording studio with everyone watching.
This is an example of how she speaks to him:
Ellie: In the end, to you, I’ll always really just be Ellie with the frizzy hair. Ellie from the “fun chum” column. Ellie, who for reasons no one understands, drives you around in her car. So just go and please just catch your plane.
Jack: We haven’t finished the conversation.
Ellie: Well, we have. We have. Unless in Liverpool Lime Street at 11:14 on a Friday—unless you choose to stay.
Jack: I can’t stay today. I’ve gotta do the Late Late Show tomorrow, and I’ve gotta do the marketing meeting of meetings. It’s ridiculous.
Ellie: And that was your chance.
That was your chance? Drop everything right now for me and if you don’t then we can’t be together? This is an entitled, unlikable character. In fact, her statement to him is not just an ultimatum, it’s sabotage. Supposedly as his manager his success is what she had been working for years to achieve and now that he is on the verge of realizing the dream of releasing a hit album she tells him to stay with her, shirk his responsibilities, and stop working on it?
Please, dear reader, don’t ever let anyone imply that you need to give up your career aspirations, your goals, your dreams, your life—to meet someone else’s arbitrary demands. Anyone who loves you will support you, will be happy for your success, and will not try to throw hurdles at you as you are struggling to climb the ladder.
This messy romance takes up half the movie, and it’s ugly. A third person is involved. This is actually a love triangle, but the characters are so shallow that the third wheel just steps aside like a sacrificial lamb without it being of any significance. Elle just jumps from one boyfriend to the other as if she’s changing shoes, not dealing with people’s hearts—and everyone just goes along with it. There are far better movies that really make you feel for the three people involved in a love triangle where only one couple can exit: Pretty in Pink (1986), Kinky Boots (2005), Lucas (1986), Sliding Doors (1998), even Back to the Future (1985). Please watch those movies instead.
Yesterday also has a cliché message that doesn’t resonate. The message in this movie is that success is happiness, and happiness is success, so you don’t need wealth, prestige, fame, or even a well-paying job as long as you’re happy. While there is some truth in that, this movie is not the vehicle to deliver this particular message because the main character never enjoyed success, or even being around successful people.
Jack always has a downtrodden, depressed look on his face whether he is in a fancy hotel, performing for a large crowd, performing for a small crowd, or at home. Of course that could be because his manipulative girlfriend, aloof parents, and clueless friends are so awful, and also because he knows he is a fraud who can’t write songs as good as the worst Beatles song and has no one he can confide in about that.
So he never actually experienced success. He did not feel the satisfaction or fulfillment of reaching the top of his field because of his creations, his products, his work. He cheated—that’s all. He merely lives out the old adage “winners never cheat, and cheaters never win.” There are no stakes then, in giving it “all” up for supposedly “true” love in order to return to the low paying and apparently unrewarding job he had before. Once again this bears repeating: no one who loves you would ask you to give up on your ambitions. That’s not love.
Also, he doesn’t fall in love with Ellie either. All we get is her declaration of love and he passively agrees to be with her as if it’s a one way transaction. And he too does something extremely manipulative as well as unfair when he surprise announces that he loves her back. He invades her privacy by showing her face and her reaction live on a giant Jumbotron for a stadium crowd to see—a crowd that includes her current boyfriend. What kind of inhumanity is this? It’s cringeworthy. It’s a sledgehammer to basic human decency, and in no way romantic. You don’t shame or coerce someone into loving you, or try to break up a couple! This is what a narcissist who doesn’t care about other people but wants to make a grand gesture does.
Listen to Paul McCartney’s “Hey Jude” lyrics instead:
You're waiting for someone to perform with.
And don't you know that it's just you.
Hey, Jude, you'll do.
Yes, you’ll do. It’s better to be alone than with bad company. In fact, you shouldn’t let your happiness completely depend on someone else. And it’s better to earn whatever level of success you achieve on your own merits. You don’t need this movie to tell you that cheating and lying won’t bring you happiness, or true success.
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"And tell the truth to everyone, whenever you can." And. "Please, dear reader, don’t ever let anyone imply that you need to give up your career aspirations, your goals, your dreams, your life—to meet someone else’s arbitrary demands." These are my favorite pull quotes from your posts. Thanks pointing them out, and/or writing them! It's powerful stuff, and nice to see spotlights shine on helpful ideas and information...!
Wow. You slammed Yesterday.... makes me definitely NOT want to watch it! It's funny that the movie apparently talks about the value of telling the truth, yet the movie itself doesn't do that. Completely agree with you that love is supportive of a partner's dreams, not destructive.