Blogging By Cinema-light: Don't Make a Scene: Yesterday

The Story: I read the news, today/Ohh-boy...

Actually, it was Friday. Friday was the 80th birthday of John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE, founder of The Beatles. Think on that for a moment (and that his middle name was inspired by Winston Churchill—he was born during the second of the World Wars). We know his story. We know how it ended. We have the clips. We have the songs, the music and his words.

And we have a certain amount of sadness with the joy for all that.

He couldn't anticipate the effect that he would have—who, given his circumstances, could? But, the group he formed out of the British "skiffle" craze went to the "Toppermost of the Poppermost," and became part of a world-wide phenomenon. Like the others, he would "give the world permission to go insane...and, for that, we gave up our nervous systems" (as band-mate George Harrison laconically—as was his way—summed it up). As part of The Beatles, he had the world screaming at his feet...and found it wanting. He looked for something else: therapy, drugs, meditation, a second marriage, political activism, then gave it up for a years-long "time-out" for domesticity, only to be be murdered just as he was returning to the music. Stolen away, just as he was starting to get the hang of it all (one hopes).

Danny Boyle's film of Jack Barth's spec script "Cover Version"—drastically re-written by Richard Curtis as Yesterday—presents a "Twilight Zone"-type story of a struggling musician traumatized into a world where The Beatles never existed...and only he can remember their songs. Singing them, he becomes a success with the purloined classics-that-never-were and he finds that what they went through wasn't so much a "desire devoutly to be wished." Both Barth's and Curtis' versions had the conflicted musician visiting John Lennon, who managed to get through it all and live to a ripe old age, not too far afield from the man the real Lennon managed to become at the end of his life...just not playing music.

When the film came out, it got a lot of stick for this scene for being "in poor taste" and "being on the edge of sacrilege" and as "a gasp-inducing moment." Boyle himself said in an interview: "It produces very intense feelings, which is absolutely understandable...I think it has a lot to do with people's own lives and their own experiences with mortality."

And a lot has to do with their perceived personal relationship with John Lennon, celebrity. Lennon's death is one of those moments you remember where you were and what you were doing when you found out (I heard it, like a lot of people did, watching Monday Night Football). That personal impact is powerful stuff, and might convince folks that their reactions might be as important as someone who actually...you know...KNEW John Lennon in reality. The vast majority of us are merely observers and consumers...not participants. In fact, taking it too personally sounds like the psychosis of the drip who shot Lennon (no names, no celebrity, thank you).

I was surprised—it was a bit of gut-punch, really—...and eventually delighted, not only because the uncredited Robert Carlyle did an eerily accurate portrayal, but also because it presented a fantasy-closure that worked with the story—it was integral, not exploitive, and the film would not have been as good without it.

And it was good to see the old duffer again...if only in fantasy.

There are places I'll remember...
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone, and some remain
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends, I still can recall
Some are dead, and some are living
In my life, I've loved them all.

The Set-Up: Imagine there's no Beatles. For busker Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), that's a reality after a bicycle/vehicle accident that left him in the hospital. Now, he's the only one who remembers the songs of The Beatles...and when he plays them, people think he's a genius! And he becomes popular, even celebrated for these songs...that he knows he did not write. This causes him some conflict. Fortunately, he's not the only person in the world who sing the old songs, and a couple of them have given him an address. It might help.

A-one, A-two, A-three, A-fower....