Yesterday: you don't have to be a Beatles fan, but it helps

Let me start with a confession. I was never all that keen on the Beatles when they were actually making music and releasing records. It was my sons, in their teenage years, that woke me to up to the fact that their music was worth listening to. So I’m something of a latter-day fan.

As Yesterday points out, it’s a sadder world where they’ve never existed

Still, as the Christians say, “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance”. Though I’m not convinced that the realms of Beatles fandom will be particularly shaken by my joining them.

As a new convert (well, relatively new: my boys’ teenage years were twenty years ago now), I was enthralled by the premise of the film Yesterday. 

Early on, an inexplicable blackout takes place across the globe, and when the lights come back on, we are in a world in which the Beatles have never existed. The very names of the band or its members evoke no memories and are, indeed, completely meaningless to those who hear them.

Except that Jack Malik, excellently played by Himesh Patel who not only acts but sings the part with skill, has been knocked off his bike and been taken to hospital unconscious during the blackout. When he comes to, he has lost no memories whatever. When his friends buy him a superb new guitar, he decides that it deserves a great song, so he plays Yesterday for them.

They are moved nearly to tears. They wonder when he wrote it. And when he explains that it’s a Beatles song, they have no idea what he’s talking about.

Malik playing Yesterday to his friends, including Ellie Appleton
To them, it’s the first time they’ve heard the son

Why did they buy him a guitar in the first place? Because he’s a struggling musician doing occasional gigs in pubs or, at best, the underpopulated side tent of a festival. In fact, he’s had so little success that he’s decided to give up on music, much to the disappointment of his manager and one true fan, Ellie Appleton, intelligently played by Lily James.

Until now… For after the blackout, he knows a whole collection of songs that are completely new to his audiences. Knockout, excellent songs. So he starts to sing them, and then to record them. Soon, he’s discovered and finds himself on the way to international stardom, all on the back of Beatles song he presents as his own.

Critics have found much to run down in the film. It’s true that the plot isn’t wholly original. It’s true that we never hear the whole of a Beatles song. It’s true too that the story is often sentimental. But sentiment well handled, and it is in this film, can be moving rather than cloying. When it comes to the songs, there’s no reason why an audience should expect to hear them all, or hear them in their entirety – we’d do nothing but listen to the songs if that were what the film did.

As for originality, that strikes me as an overrated quality.

What matters isn’t how new your material is, it’s what you do with it. And Yesterday handles it gloriously. Again and again, one can predict exactly where the film is going and then, in a fine twist, it doesn’t go there, even if overall it reaches the point you might expect.

It contains well-constructed characters, performed by fine actors, including a monster of a music-industry woman whose shocking amorality is a constant source of humour. Why, it even contains Ed Sheeran playing himself in a lovely self-mocking portrayal of a real music star, if not so great a one as the Beatles.

Himesh Patel as Jack Malik with Ed Sheeran as Ed Sheeran

Besides, there are some excellent touches. It isn’t just the Beatles that are missing from the post-blackout world – some other major items from our world don’t make it. And there’s a clever theme about whether Malik really is the only person in the world who remembers the Beatles, a theme which leads to another good plot twist.

Overall, Yesterday provides a couple of hours of excellent entertainment. It’s well worth seeing. In addition, as I can now admit with enthusiasm, it includes some excellent music.