A world without the Beatles?
And, suddenly, a global blackout. No one has explanations, but for a few seconds the world turns off. **Jack (Himesh Patel)** is caught riding his bike home to Suffolk, and in those dark seconds a bus is ahead of him. He wakes up in the hospital, sore and with two missing teeth, but a miraculous memory: apparently, he is the only inhabitant of Earth who, after the fade to black, remembers the Beatles. The only one who knows that they once existed and revolutionized music and society.
That's the story he's written Richard Curtis _(Notting Hill, Love Actually) _ and directs Danny Boyle _(Trainspottin, Slumdog Millionaire) _in Yesterday.
And what do you do if you're the only one who knows who the Beatles were? Jack, a singer-songwriter who doesn't even fill the pubs in his town, decides to take advantage of it and win the great masterpieces of John, Paul, Ringo and George. Starting with Yesterday, his job (which is not a small one) is to remember not only the titles but also the lyrics and melodies. A task only suitable for professional beatlemaniacs.
Himesh Patel is the new Beatle.
Precisely because of the difficulty he finds remembering the exact words of some of the songs and overwhelmed by the lie that he lives and has led him to be the greatest promise of pop, above Ed Sheeran (playing himself), he decides to travel to Liverpool, mother city of the Beatles, tour the places where some of the themes were born, the streets where they became much more than a myth.
“It's weird for Jack to go to Liverpool because he's kind of stealing the songs. But that connection between a singer-songwriter's talent and his land, all that texture and culture that feeds and produces the music... Jack goes there and gets hooked on it, ”says Danny Boyle. “I guess he can be excused because there is a danger that the songs will be forgotten, and he is giving them back to people. It seemed like the right thing to do to go back to Liverpool and shoot there like it was the first time we'd seen those sets. That's hard there, because they are very proud of the group. We had to do some digital erasing!”
The gates with the name full of Beatlemaniac graffiti.
“What does Liverpool have that Los Angeles doesn't?” asks his ambitious manager (Kate McKinnon). “Mashed peas, rain…” Jack replies. And of course you have pennylane, the Liverpool street to which Paul McCartney dedicated a song of the same name in which he recalled characters and places from his childhood.
In Liverpool it is also Strawberryfield, the estate where an orphanage of the Salvation Army was located, in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool, very close to where John Lennon lived as a child and who remembered that park to write Strawberry Fields Forever.
When the Yesterday film crew arrived, they were very disappointed: only the doors remain, with the mythical poster. The house had been demolished. "It was heartbreaking," says Boyle. "Those memories were specific to Liverpool."
Jack singing Help! on a roof.
They also approach Eleanor Rigby's Grave, the song that most resists Jack.
And the director also has surprises in store for those professional Beatlemaniacs. "There's another scene where Jack listens to my favorite Beatles song, Hello Goodbye, in the Mersey Tunnel." he says. “I think those things only have meaning for the people of Liverpool, but I'm proud of them. There are a couple of things in the movie that will be puzzling to the rest of the world, but we haven't cut them out because the connection to the city is more important than trying to make everyone understand everything. They will know, ”he sentences.
Without the Beatles, Abbey Road would be just another street.
we do recognize abbey road and how In a world where the Beatles didn't exist, it's just another London street. “where they drive on the wrong side” are mocked in the film itself.
Yesterday runs, in addition, the edwardian coast of suffolk (where Richard Curtis and Ed Sheeran himself live), begin with Clacton-on-Sea and end in Gorleston-on-Sea, where, up on the roof of the Pier Hotel, Jack pays tribute to that legendary moment when the Liverpool band played Don't Let Me Down and Get Back on the roof of Apple in Saville Row. There sings a heartbreaking Help! asking for help because yes, there is no doubt, "A world without the Beatles is an infinitely worse world." And Liverpool too
And, in the end... All You Need is Love.