Sometimes it feels like someone else has written all the songs.
Some movie pitches just sound like gold. Yesterday taps into a notion many of us have considered - how the world would have differed without this or that cultural phenomenon. What if there'd been no Mozart, or Shakespeare, or (heaven forbid the thought) Doctor Who? How impoverished would we all have been? Danny Boyle's new film puts a Beatles-shaped hole in history and asks an unlikely hero to fill it. The results, while not the pure eighteen-carat I might have hoped, are shiny enough to light up a darkened cinema space this summer movie season. Here comes a considerable amount of sun.
Himesh Patel is Jack Malik, an aspiring singer-songwriter whose career is resolutely failing to launch, despite the encouragements of his manager/best friend Ellie (Lily James). Some bizarre cosmic fluctuation causes all the lights on Earth to blink off and on, during which time Jack sustains a traffic-related head injury. When he wakes, he is the only person who remembers The Beatles or any of their music. The band, it seems, has been erased from all of history, aside from Jack's mind. So when he begins to sing and play their songs, it opens up the possibility of that elusive music career - just so long as his conscience can cope with passing off John, Paul, George and Ringo's creativity as his own.
Yesterday is almost destined to be divisive. Writer Richard Curtis is the doyen of the high-concept British rom-com, while director Boyle is chiefly known for the edgily propulsive feel he brings to challenging screenplays. Fans of the Trainspotting films, or even Slumdog Millionaire (which has a lot more grit than you may remember) may simply not be on board with Curtis' patented brand of romantic optimism. On the other hand those who found Love Actually a bit too sentimental may well appreciate the tempering of the writer's more sugary inclinations by some of Boyle's bite.
There's much that this duo's love-letter to the Fab Four gets right, not least the fun it has with that delicious central premise. Jack is burdened with a mission to re-introduce The Beatles to the world, while simultaneously indulging in an opportunism that will grant him the success he lacked. His first faltering steps with tunes he already knows to be great are mined productively for laughs, as is his wrestling with half-remembered lyrics. There are great moments too as the Beatles' songs clash with a 21st century music industry that in some cases doesn't know what to do with them. (Kate McKinnon has fun here as a grotesquely avaricious music executive.)
That the classic tunes work so well is due in no small part to Patel (Tamwar Masood in BBC soap Eastenders), who reinterprets them with a freshness and passion enhanced by their extraordinary context. Boyle meanwhile emphasises the growing sense of guilt and lostness the musician feels, as success and Malik-mania begin to escalate. James radiates her trademark earnestness as lovelorn Ellie (she makes everything better, Mamma Mia 2 included, just by showing up), while Ed Sheeran proves willing to be the butt of the film's jokes as an understated version of himself. Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal are good comic value as Jack's genially clueless parents and Joel Fry nimbly steals a clutch of scenes as shambling roadie-pal Rocky, even if he the character is a clear rip-off of Notting Hill's Spike.
That ripping off of past Curtis movies is perhaps Yesterday's biggest issue. Jack and Ellie's unrequited love-plot is written in a way that can distract from the central vanished-Beatles idea, particularly in the final act. It's played with admirable conviction by the leads, but still has a tendency to drag things back into overly familiar Four Weddings and a Funeral territory, rather than dovetail unobtrusively into the story as a whole.
Thankfully the story sticks to its guns re its core premise, even if it does embrace classic Curtis rom-com tropes towards the end. What we're really interested in is Jack's whole non-existent Beatles dilemma and on that front the film follows through, avoiding any narrative cop-outs and refusing, Groundhog Day-style, to explain the weird glitch in reality. Admittedly the underlying notion is fundamentally daft and begs all kinds of knock-on time travel-ly issues that the film barely addresses, but brush all that aside. It's a neat conceit with which both writer and director have a lot of fun, more than enough to make the enterprise worthwhile. Plus it's great to hear all those magnificent songs reworked. In the circumstances what else could Jack have done?
Seriously, imagine there's no Beatles...
Gut Reaction: A pretty high laughter-to-joke percentage rate, while the music simply made me happy. One iconic song intro had we properly tearing up.
Memorable Moment: Jack endeavours to 'Let It Be'.
Ed's Verdict: 7/10. The resorting to romantic cliche is too obvious, but as an exploration of Jack in a Beatle-less world this hits all the right Mersey beats.
What does it mean to be a Harvard man?
On the Basis of Sex is a distinctly Trump-era movie, one that seems a direct response to political events of the past two years. Like The Post and BlackKklansman it mines 20th century US history to reflect on a liberal-conservative culture war that's raging harder than ever today. The fact that its protagonist is still - as of my posting this review - an active member of America's Supreme Court and that its US release came just months after the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation, provides this well-made but conventional biopic with an urgency it might not otherwise have had.
Felicity Jones plays Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the pioneering civil rights lawyer, who highlighted and challenged the gender inequality written into America's legal system. Charting the early years of Bader Ginsburg's career it opens with her arrival at Harvard Law School, one of a handful of women in a bastion of maleness. Chauvinism is her daily experience - never more so than at a dinner held by the college Dean (Sam Waterston) - but supported by her devoted husband Marty (Armie Hammer) she excels. Post-studies she commits to academia and the development of thinking on women's rights, but her career truly finds direction - as does the film - when she takes on the case of Charles Moritz, who faces discrimination on the basis of being an unmarried man caring for his invalid mother. If you challenge gender-based prejudice one case at a time, she muses, demonstrating that the injustice cuts both ways, the end result will be legal and cultural revolution.
Penned by first-time screenwriter (and Bader Ginsburg nephew) Daniel Stiepleman, the script dives deep into the law, letting the drama make sense of all the legal terminology; there's no dumbing down here. It proves smart to focus on a single case, one which serves to elucidate the movie's themes of equality and injustice. The screenplay also emphasizes the power of a matriarchal support-system, referencing the rapport Bader Ginsburg's had with her late mother and focusing on the tricky but ultimately positive relationship with her own daughter (Bad Times at the El Royale's Cailee Spaeny). If the writer's inexperience shows up anywhere, it's in the predictability of certain plot beats, like the climactic moment of courtroom grandstanding (although many a seasoned screen dramatist has indulged in exactly the same).
Director Mimi Leder does a does a commendable, unshowy job, moving the plot along fluidly and letting the cast do the heavy lifting. Jones demonstrates steely determination as the campaigning lawyer, finding the tension between focused intelligence and youthful frustration. Her Brooklyn accent struck me as variable, a bit of a distraction until the quiet force of her performance took over. As husband Marty, Hammer is the definition of charm (reportedly the man was just as likeable in real life) and a poster-boy for the progressive Sixties husband. The symbiosis between the two - both characters and actors - lends a touching love-story element, while providing an object lesson in the kind of gender balance Bader Ginsburg was striving to achieve. The film is nicely acted at all points - Justin Theroux is well-rounded as Ruth's friend and legal sparring-partner Melvin Wulf, while Kathy Bates turns in a dependably spiky cameo as retired civil rights attorney Dorothy Kenyon. But this is chiefly Jones' and Hammer's show, and thankfully they nail the chemistry.
This reality-inspired tale never tries to be spectacular, going about its narrative business with the same pragmatic, no-nonsense approach I suspect Bader Ginsburg has always taken to her legal battles. It's not as directly confrontational as say BlackKklansman, when establishing the story's links with current events (although one mildly theatrical flourish right at the end connects it directly with 2019). Purely in terms of timing, however, the film couldn't be more welcome. And its celebration of RBG's graceful doggedness in pursuit of sexual equality didn't need any fireworks. It simply needed to be told well. Job done.
Gut Reaction: Quietly engrossed most of the time, and moved as well - particularly by the Ruth-Marty connection.
Memorable Moment: One tough living-room hearing.
Ed's Verdict: 7/10. Made with workmanlike (workpersonlike?) efficiency and sharply acted at all points, On the Basis of Sex overcomes a tendency to cliche, delivering its message with considerable power.
Now I am yours. For ever and ever.
The Gist: Love sucks - but at least in Cold War is does so
with beauty and style. Wiktor is a musical director helping scout talent
in rural Poland in the years following the Second World War. The goal
is to create a people's song and dance troupe that shows off the
richness of the country's folk music (an enterprise that ends up as a
propaganda tool for the ruling Soviet authorities). During the audition
process he falls for Zula, a precocious young woman with a purportedly
dark past. The affair that ensues must be kept secret, though it could
be celebrated openly if the pair defected. The question is whether both
are equally committed to running - and whether the relationship could
endure in the decadent West, away from the climate that nurtured its
furtive beginnings.
The Juice: Captured in aspect ratio and crisp black and white, Pawel Pawlikowski's sweeping romantic drama rivals Roma as one of 2018's most strikingly gorgeous films. The initial snowbound Polish scenes are static and austere, with the movie bursting into frantic life during the music-troupe sequences and then turning slinky and sinuous as the story progresses to the smoky jazz clubs of Paris. Tomasz Kot and Joanna Kulig make for a tremendously sexy pair as Wiktor and Zula, their passion as hot as the Eastern bloc winter is freezing. Then things turn ironically angsty and obstacle-strewn when they embrace the freedoms of the West, in scenes reminiscent of a French new wave classic. Their story covers two decades in a mere hour and a half, leaping years at a time and letting the viewer piece together the intervening events. While rich in historical detail, this film is all about the impossible anguished love of two people who just can't fit, even when life allows them the freedom to do so.
The Judgement: 8.5/10. Based on the pristine cinematography and smouldering performances alone, this is a 10. I was frustrated by the choppy narrative, however, wanting to understand more about the dynamics of Wiktor and Joanna's relationship, but never getting to spend sufficient time with them in any one place. It's testament to how intoxicating these characters are, however, (to say nothing of how magnificently Europe's past is recreated) that I wanted much more of their company. Maybe that was the point.
