Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

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Brian C
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#26 Post by Brian C » Sat Feb 16, 2019 9:40 pm

I was just wondering who exactly the hypocrisy charge was being thrown at. Persona? Senseabove? Hypothetical and possibly apocryphal fans of misogynistic rap among the #metoo movement?

I don't quite understand what the line about "critiquing the past for not being the present" means in this context, but that's a secondary question.

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senseabove
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Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#27 Post by senseabove » Sun Feb 17, 2019 3:01 am

Yeah, I have no particular case to make against the Beatles, and no particular interest in making one, but I think I should point out the part where
A) The Beatles are also in my record collection, and
B) the conceit of the movie is that no one has ever heard any Beatles songs before their contemporary release, which is
C) the reason one might note that their lyrical content, in today’s climate, might garner a different reaction than during the time of their original composition.
Last edited by senseabove on Sun Feb 17, 2019 3:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

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swo17
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#28 Post by swo17 » Sun Feb 17, 2019 3:05 am

Their lyrical content in one tongue-in-cheek song?

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Big Ben
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#29 Post by Big Ben » Sun Feb 17, 2019 3:14 am

swo17 wrote:
Sun Feb 17, 2019 3:05 am
Their lyrical content in one tongue-in-cheek song?
To add to this, Lennon was acutely aware of what he was writing because people were very much analyzing the lyrics of Beatles records at the time. I Am the Walrus was written as a direct response to Lennon hearing that his lyrics were being analyzed by schoolchildren and as such it's entirely nonsensical on purpose. It of course did not stop people from debating endlessly about it though. And so Lennon/McCartney did it again with Glass Onion which has a gag line stating that "The Walrus was Paul".

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senseabove
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#30 Post by senseabove » Sun Feb 17, 2019 4:12 am

Which is fine and dandy—except that the premise of the movie is that their original context has been completely erased. Saying "Well Lennon was being tongue-in-cheek" isn't a valid defense if Lennon never existed.

And again, I'm not trying to say the Beatles ain't woke enough for our delicate contemporary ears. All I'm saying is that, when listening to Beatles albums chronologically over a few weeks several few years ago, on a handful of occasions, I thought to myself, "Wow, the lyrics to this are pretty creepy," and therefore Persona's original comment was not completely out of left field for me.

(And I do not care enough about this movie nor the Beatles to re-listen to their discography and figure out which songs made me think that... That song was literally the first thing that popped up when I googled "beatles creepy lyrics.")

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Big Ben
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#31 Post by Big Ben » Sun Feb 17, 2019 4:47 am

senseabove wrote:
Sun Feb 17, 2019 4:12 am
Which is fine and dandy—except that the premise of the movie is that their original context has been completely erased. Saying "Well Lennon was being tongue-in-cheek" isn't a valid defense if Lennon never existed.

And again, I'm not trying to say the Beatles ain't woke enough for our delicate contemporary ears. All I'm saying is that, when listening to Beatles albums chronologically over a few weeks several few years ago, on a handful of occasions, I thought to myself, "Wow, the lyrics to this are pretty creepy," and therefore Persona's original comment was not completely out of left field for me.

(And I do not care enough about this movie nor the Beatles to re-listen to their discography and figure out which songs made me think that... That song was literally the first thing that popped up when I googled "beatles creepy lyrics.")
The Beatles recorded over two hundred original compositions though. While the plot is already preposterous surely surely Himesh Patel's character has only memorized the most bomb ass tunes that they wrote? I understand what you're saying but both you and Persona are implying that Patel's characters has both memorized and is going to drop quite a few tracks that he'd be acutely aware of being, well, really bad content wise. Surely he'd be aware of the difference between something like Yesterday and Run for Your Life? Furthermore Patel's character in this scenario has to initiate the exposure of these tunes as the world is completely unaware of them by your own admission. If anything he's in a position to make them look better by excluding all the bad tunes if by some bizarre plot point that he's remembered them all.

For the record I don't actually disagree with you per se but I don't think you're being entirely fair either and both you and Persona raise a good point. I think this will be far easier to discuss when the film is actually out as all the unknowns don't lead credence to perfect discussion. Speaking for myself I don't expect this to be anything other than a crowd pleaser. Completely milquetoast and entirely inoffensive to the general

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furbicide
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#32 Post by furbicide » Sun Feb 17, 2019 8:21 am

I’m flabbergasted that some people here are actually interested in this. This is the most groanworthy premise for a film that I’ve heard in a long time. Obnoxious magic realism + boomer nostalgia + I’m guessing a totally predictable rom-com set-up in which the guy gets crushed under the weight of his big lie, gets found out by everyone including his crush (obligatory downbeat end of second act) but then everything’s all right at the end because it’s all about the music, man. (If the film’s even worse, ordinary reality will reassert itself.) I can imagine it being a crowdpleaser, but everything about this fills me with pure dread and loathing.

Nearly forty years ago, The Clash wrote the line “phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust”. If only...

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colinr0380
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#33 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Feb 17, 2019 8:33 am

furbicide, you have made me think that this film is probably going to end with a big dance-a-long number in the vein of This Is The End's big Backstreet Boys piece!

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Persona
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#34 Post by Persona » Sun Feb 17, 2019 9:38 am

Yeah, I'm not going to try to get entrenched in further debate about the themes/implications of the film at this point. From the trailer it definitely seems like they're going for "as innocuous as possible," but given the high-concept context I do think some unintentional interest could come from what looks to be a storyline about Patel becoming a womanizer after he is successful and also the idea of Patel, an Indian man, appropriating the music of a white man group that appropriated so much from others and other cultures themselves.

And, yes, I like some Beatles records (Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper's, White Album...) and I like quite a bit of rap. My original post was not intended to be some sly condemnation of the Beatles' work or of the people who like their music. Just an acknowledgment that they, like many popular groups of their time, contained a member or two who would be facing a much more un-receptive and possibly even harsh cultural climate now than they did in their time. For the Beatles in particular, John Lennon is a guy who might have found himself on the wrong side of things today, and not undeservedly:

https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/ ... ust-a-fact

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mfunk9786
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#35 Post by mfunk9786 » Sun Feb 17, 2019 5:04 pm

Kind of disappointed to find out our forum has one of these

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Persona
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#36 Post by Persona » Sun Feb 17, 2019 6:18 pm

It seems relevant to discussing the trailer and the premise of the movie. It's not something I am just trying to bring up for its own sake.

If you guys want to discuss this movie just in the framework of "oh, this is going to be silly," then okay.

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dustybooks
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#37 Post by dustybooks » Sun Feb 17, 2019 7:39 pm

I kind of see both sides of this, and I've laughed many times at the Onion piece mfunk linked because I've known an exhausting number of people who, learning that I'm a very obsessive Beatles fan, really cannot wait to inform me that Lennon was an asshole or that "Imagine" was hypocritical and all the rest. At the same time, having grown up in a very Boomer-oriented world, I understand the need to puncture those myths and bring them back to earth, and I dare say that Lennon himself would've sympathized with that impulse. More broadly, I think the phenomenon of wanting to question Lennon's pedestal comes from the way his persona has been pushed and marketed since his death; we're largely sold not the boisterous, imaginative rock & roller with severe emotional problems but the sort of placid utopian peacemonger that he really only embodied for a brief period of his adulthood. Lots of classic rock titans were violent men who treated women horribly (Peter Guralnick's bio of Sam Cooke was a very sobering experience), but there's something about the Lennon mythos that makes people want to go on the attack against his legacy above all others... and I won't lie to you, he's my favorite Beatle and one of my favorite artists ever, but I 100% get it, and I think more than anything it comes down to the posthumous selling of the man as a saint, which is so much less interesting than who/what he truly was.

My wariness toward this film comes with the knowledge that of all the "third party" Beatles movies the only one that seems to have gotten it right at all is Zemeckis' I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and in that case strictly because it focused completely on the insanity of fandom and, in that particular sense, it isn't even irrevocably tied to a particular time, place or sensation. As usual, I'm torn between kind of agreeing that Beatles cultural saturation long ago passed into the realm of ridiculousness and genuinely believing they were a great and important institution that deserves their status, so when something like this happens I usually end up just wanting to hide until it blows over.

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Persona
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#38 Post by Persona » Sun Feb 17, 2019 7:50 pm

dustybooks wrote:
Sun Feb 17, 2019 7:39 pm
I kind of see both sides of this, and I've laughed many times at the Onion piece mfunk linked because I've known an exhausting number of people who, learning that I'm a very obsessive Beatles fan, really cannot wait to inform me that Lennon was an asshole or that "Imagine" was hypocritical and all the rest. At the same time, having grown up in a very Boomer-oriented world, I understand the need to puncture those myths and bring them back to earth, and I dare say that Lennon himself would've sympathized with that impulse. More broadly, I think the phenomenon of wanting to question Lennon's pedestal comes from the way his persona has been pushed and marketed since his death; we're largely sold not the boisterous, imaginative rock & roller with severe emotional problems but the sort of placid utopian peacemonger that he really only embodied for a brief period of his adulthood. Lots of classic rock titans were violent men who treated women horribly (Peter Guralnick's bio of Sam Cooke was a very sobering experience), but there's something about the Lennon mythos that makes people want to go on the attack against his legacy above all others... and I won't lie to you, he's my favorite Beatle and one of my favorite artists ever, but I 100% get it, and I think more than anything it comes down to the posthumous selling of the man as a saint, which is so much less interesting than who/what he truly was.

My wariness toward this film comes with the knowledge that of all the "third party" Beatles movies the only one that seems to have gotten it right at all is Zemeckis' I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and in that case strictly because it focused completely on the insanity of fandom and, in that particular sense, it isn't even irrevocably tied to a particular time, place or sensation. As usual, I'm torn between kind of agreeing that Beatles cultural saturation long ago passed into the realm of ridiculousness and genuinely believing they were a great and important institution that deserves their status, so when something like this happens I usually end up just wanting to hide until it blows over.
A very reasonable, balanced perspective and your course of action (hiding until it blows over) is probably the smart one!

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Brian C
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#39 Post by Brian C » Sun Feb 17, 2019 8:27 pm

I agree, that's a good post, dustybooks.

I think a more interesting movie would be one that Eli Cash-style presupposes that Lennon survived the shooting and imagines (sorry) how his life would have proceeded from there. How would Lennon and The Beatles be perceived today if that had happened? Would he have become the "placid utopian peacemonger" (nice phrase) that he's been sold as? Would he have developed into an old, out-of-touch crank? Would the probably inevitable Beatles reunions have cheapened the band's legacy or made them even more popular to younger generations?

In a roundabout way, this movie kinda seems to be getting at some of those things, by suggesting that the appeal of the music is so strong that it survives not having even existed in the first place! But it'd be more interesting to see a movie grapple seriously with that legacy instead of taking it for granted and coasting off of it.

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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#40 Post by furbicide » Mon Feb 18, 2019 12:47 am

No offence, but don't we have enough (like, an entire locust swarm of) old rockers left alive for that to be a pretty mundane what-if question? He'd just be another Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Elton John or Morrissey, getting asked for dumb opinions on every news event imaginable, getting into and out of relationships covered breathlessly by the tabloids and dropping increasingly culturally irrelevant albums to diminishing critical acclaim and sales.

What would have happened if Ian Curtis had lived – now there's a what-if movie I could get on board with. ;)

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#41 Post by Roger Ryan » Mon Feb 18, 2019 9:44 am

As someone who started listening to "Run For Your Life" a mere ten years after it was recorded, I would suggest the track was meant to be creepy and is not a case of "this might have seemed acceptable back in '65, but not now". When the song was first recorded, Lennon was actively trying to break out of the innocent "mop-top" image by introducing subversive elements into the Beatles' music and image. Other contemporary examples of this would be: the fairly puerile "dirty joke" of the backing vocals to "Girl" ("tit-tit-tit-tit") and the withdrawn "butcher" cover for the U.S. release Yesterday and Today.

The refashioning of Lennon as "placid utopian peacemonger" to use the phrase "dustybooks" introduced above was definitely something that came about after his death. To get a sense of how Lennon was perceived, in some quarters, while he was alive, here's National Lampoon's hilarious take-down "Magical Misery Tour" from 1972, which strings together actual published quotes from Lennon from the previous two or three years.

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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#42 Post by John Shade » Tue Feb 19, 2019 8:59 am

This thread has been far more insane than I could have imagined. This movie looks fun and stupid and won't ruin the greatest band of all time. Take the premise for what it is--they aren't going to go that deep with it, aside from some (my guess) little jokes.

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Persona
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#43 Post by Persona » Tue Feb 19, 2019 9:59 am

John Shade wrote:
Tue Feb 19, 2019 8:59 am
This thread has been far more insane than I could have imagined. This movie looks fun and stupid and won't ruin the greatest band of all time. Take the premise for what it is--they aren't going to go that deep with it, aside from some (my guess) little jokes.
There are implications that Patel's character doesn't treat his girlfriend too well and there is the part late in the trailer where it looks like once he's successful he starts flirting with other women but, all in all, I think you're probably right.

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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#44 Post by John Shade » Tue Feb 19, 2019 10:17 am

Based on the look of it, he becomes famous and starts neglecting her, the girl that got him started who was there all along, only to realize that she truly was the one all this time. Then he sings "And I Love Her". Or maybe "All You Need is Love". There's no need to put spoiler on my post...

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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#45 Post by Cremildo » Tue Feb 19, 2019 11:16 am

Persona wrote:
Tue Feb 19, 2019 9:59 am
There are implications that Patel's character doesn't treat his girlfriend too well and there is the part late in the trailer where it looks like once he's successful he starts flirting with other women
May I ask: so what?

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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#46 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Feb 19, 2019 11:32 am

Every time I come into this thread it gets weirder. The mere existence of this film seems to have broken some people's brains (here and elsewhere)

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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#47 Post by swo17 » Tue Feb 19, 2019 11:32 am

"Rated R for smoking, guy being a bad boyfriend, and thought of a world where The Beatles almost don't exist"

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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#48 Post by Fiery Angel » Tue Feb 19, 2019 11:58 am

mfunk9786 wrote:
Tue Feb 19, 2019 11:32 am
Every time I come into this thread it gets weirder. The mere existence of this film seems to have broken some people's brains (here and elsewhere)
Here, there and everywhere

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Persona
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#49 Post by Persona » Tue Feb 19, 2019 1:12 pm

Cremildo wrote:
Tue Feb 19, 2019 11:16 am
Persona wrote:
Tue Feb 19, 2019 9:59 am
There are implications that Patel's character doesn't treat his girlfriend too well and there is the part late in the trailer where it looks like once he's successful he starts flirting with other women
May I ask: so what?
See: context of the discussion.

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Persona
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Re: Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)

#50 Post by Persona » Tue Feb 19, 2019 1:18 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:
Tue Feb 19, 2019 11:32 am
Every time I come into this thread it gets weirder. The mere existence of this film seems to have broken some people's brains (here and elsewhere)
Alternate realities, man...

In a better timeline than this one the Beatles never broke up, Danny Boyle found his purpose as a filmmaker, and this movie doesn't exist.

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