Yesterday (5 Stars)

Director Danny Boyle never disappoints me. All of his films are special, but there's something that sets him apart from other great directors like Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch and Steven Spielberg. Those directors all have a distinctive style. You can watch a new film by any of them and recognise who made it. I'm not saying that as a criticism. Why should Quentin Tarantino be a second-rate Spielberg when he can be the world's best Tarantino? Danny Boyle is someone who doesn't have a recognisable style. If you look at the films "Slumdog Millionaire", "Steve Jobs" and "Trance", they're not recognisable as the works of the same director. They're all brilliant films, but totally different to one another.

And "Yesterday" is another film that's untypical for Danny Boyle. Or maybe I should say it's typical, because what's typical for his films is that there's nothing typical about them.

The film is about Jack Malik, a struggling musician from Lowestoft. That's a well known town in England, but if you're from any other country you'll have to look it up on a map. Jack is about to give up his musical career and return to his previous job as a teacher, when he's involved in an accident. During a global blackout he's hit by a bus and knocked off his bike. When he wakes up he finds out that the world is subtly different. There's no Coca Cola, there are no cigarettes, and the Beatles never existed.

Jack remembers most of the Beatles' songs, so he begins to sing them as his repertoire. At first he says that they were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, but when he realises that nobody knows them he says that he wrote the songs himself. Within a month he becomes the world's most famous singer-songwriter.

I have a great respect for the Beatles, especially the creative team of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Together they wrote countless brilliant pop songs in a few years. They continued to write songs after they split up, but alone they never reached the creative peaks that they did together. I grew up with the Beatles. As a young child I listened to the Beatles records that my parents bought for me. Sitting in the cinema this evening I could sing along with the songs.

However, I have to question whether the Beatles or their songs would be so successful today. It's possible that "Yesterday" could move people as an emotional ballad, but I can't imagine "She Loves You" being a hit if it were written today. The same applies to all of the Beatles' early hits, from "Please Please Me" to "A Hard Day's Night". I wouldn't say that they're dated, but they're still a product of the 1960's. The youth of today has moved on. That's my opinion, anyway. What do you think?

Maybe the film "Yesterday" will awake more interest in the music of the Beatles. I hope so. Their music is too good to be forgotten.