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Wednesday, July 3, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS
Have you ever wondered what
would happen if a select assortment
of pop culture phenomena ceased to
exist, only for a handful of people to
remember them and have to figure
out what to do with that memory?
I haven’t either, but “Yesterday”
builds a premise around that hyper-
specific conflict, specifically as it
pertains to The Beatles and the lone,
previously unsuccessful musician
who remembers them, Jack Malik
(Himesh Patel, “EastEnders”). It
was a calculated risk — reportedly,
10 million dollars’ worth — to bank
an entire film on such a particular
dilemma. Why not another band?
Better yet, why not pose the same
question of another historical phe-
nomenon: something of graver con-
sequence, like a war? But it’s not my
place to postulate about what they
could have done; I’m assessing what
they did. While they ran with their
initial risk, the makers of “Yester-
day” played it safe otherwise, and left
us with a harmless but perfunctory
romantic comedy.
Humor has the potential to make
laughable concepts appear intelli-
gent. Shows like “Seinfeld” got away
with it for years. Such an application
of humor is vital for a film like “Yes-
terday,” to get us past the peculiarity,
if not absurdity, of its scenario. In the
movie, however, the humor was hit
or miss, depending partly on who
you are. Just as some of the jokes on
the original “Office” bewilder fans of
the American adaption, “Yesterday”’s
British brand of humor may not reso-
nate with the Yankees in the crowd
who aren’t bloody interested in the
BBC. It relied heavily on situational
comedy and deadpan delivery, both
of which Patel had the perfect, non-
plussed face for.
Regardless of who you are, how-
ever, the bulk of “Yesterday”’s humor
will feel like it’s missing something,
and that’s self-deprecation. It’s what
made Ed Sheeran’s (“Bridget Jones’s
Baby”) cameo so surprisingly hilari-
ous with all the jokes about “ginger
rap” and subpar lyricism he had to
dodge, and Kate McKinnon’s (“The
Spy Who Dumped Me”) brutally
honest assessments of record execu-
tives’ intentions wickedly funny.
Curiously, “Yesterday” relegated this
kind of humor to the sidelines, when
its absurd, world-without-Beatles,
butterfly-effect-be-damned
main
storyline needed it most. We can’t
be expected to take you seriously if
you’re not self-aware enough to laugh
at your quirks.
An exercise in self-deprecation: If
I were in Jack’s place, one of the few
remaining keepers of The Beatles’s
music, I’m afraid whatever musi-
cal genius John, Paul, George and
Ringo offered the world would be
lost. That’s not what screenwriter
Richard Curtis (“Mamma Mia! Here
We Go Again”) had in store for Jack,
however, and this element of the film
makes a bold, albeit probably inadver-
tent, comment on musical genius. By
allocating Jack the same proportion
of success The Beatles enjoyed from
their work, the film implies songs are
habitable rather than the product of
unique genius, a nice jolt to the West-
ern conception of creativity. There’s
a clumsiness to even this maneuver,
however, as the remakes of Beatles’s
hits are touristy, forgettable covers at
best, and, on top of the musical medi-
ocrity, no one in the movie ever paus-
es to interrogate what, if anything,
makes Beatles lyrics timeless.
That is another one of the film’s
biggest faults: With classic cinematic
mistrust of audience’s intelligence,
it either brushes over or hastens to
answer all of the questions it raises.
The one original question it stammers
out, it hastens to answer in no uncer-
tain terms for us. Jack’s ethical dilem-
ma, as to whether he should pass off
another’s work as his own? Solved.
The romantic void Jack must cope
with as his fame accelerates expo-
nentially? Filled. Don’t you know, his
best friend Ellie (Lily James, “Baby
Driver”) has been in love with him all
his life, and her confession suddenly
flips a switch for him. Yes, “Yester-
day”: The clumsy comedy comes with
clumsy love story on the side. Not
what you ordered? Once again, me
neither.
“Yesterday” does very little harm,
but also little notable good, tak-
ing few risks, aside from building
a movie around a world where the
Beatles didn’t record their own songs.
You’re probably better off queuing up
Abbey Road and asking yourself what
your life would be like without those
songs, than seeing this film’s mini-
mally inventive take on that question.
‘Yesterday’ lacks originality
JULIANNA MORANO
Summer Managing Arts Editor
FILM REVIEW
UNIVERSAL PICTURES
On June 25, Courtney Barnett
opened for The National at Hill
Auditorium. Hill is a big venue,
and people were still filing in
when Barnett took the stage.
She began with “Avant Gar-
dener,” a song whose title is so
endearingly clever that I wish
I’d thought of it myself.
I’ll say now that I wasn’t a
huge fan of Barnett before hear-
ing her live. Something about
her speak-singing felt overly
stylized, and her lyrics seemed
too crammed with Dylanesque
forced rhymes. Live, she was a
whole new ball of wax. Barnett
is smaller than I expected, pix-
ie-like, with a long mullet that
made me fantasize about get-
ting the same haircut. She sort
of looks like Shailene Woodley.
Either way, she came across as
both intimidatingly cool and
familiar, like someone you’d
strike up a conversation with at
a co-op party.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly
what was so incredible about
Barnett’s
performance.
Her
voice isn’t lovely, exactly; she
mostly yells or speaks along
with the music. She’s an excep-
tional guitar player, but that
alone doesn’t explain it. I think
it’s her enthusiasm, the unapol-
ogetic excitement with which
she performs. Her whole set had
the energy of that scene in “Back
to the Future” where Michael J.
Fox plays Johnny B. Goode. She
hopped around the stage, her
feet constantly shuffling and
moving. As she sang, Barnett
dipped her guitar into a never-
ending series of maneuvers,
as if she were the professional
partner in a “Dancing with the
Stars” tango and her guitar was
the celebrity. At one point she
leaned forward, left leg rising
behind her like a figure skater,
as if she’d become Tonya Hard-
ing on season 26 of “Dancing
with the Stars.” My point is that
Barnett was completely mes-
merizing. The only person she
even remotely reminds me of is
a young Melissa Etheridge, who
I’ve never seen live but whose
early concert videos show the
same kind of physicality. Bar-
nett’s head-banging was no less
thrilling.
The National came onstage
a few minutes after Barnett’s
giddy farewell (“Thank you!”
in a ripper Australian accent).
Anyway: The National. The
large screens on each side of the
stage flashed pixelated videos
as they set up, which reminded
me of those old ads about movie
piracy in which illegally down-
loading a movie is compared to
stealing purses and televisions.
Unfortunately, The National’s
performance was as ineffective
as those warnings.
They began with “You Had
Your Soul With You” from
their most recent album, I Am
Easy to Find. It sounded good
in a tight, controlled way — the
opposite of Barnett’s freewheel-
ing, experimental sound. The
next few songs were also from I
Am Easy to Find: “Quiet Light,”
“The Pull of You,” “Hey Rosey.”
They all sounded overproduced
to the point of flatness, and the
instruments were so loud that
I could barely hear frontman
Matt Berninger’s voice. I could
decipher a few words thanks to
Berninger’s habit of acting out
the lyrics in a series of jerky
motions that looked uncannily
similar to the five movements
from “The OA.”
Once, Berninger walked out
along a side aisle and pinned an
uncomfortable-looking
audi-
ence member up against the
wall, plucking the man’s base-
ball cap from his head and sing-
ing plaintively to him. The guy
laughed nervously and darted
away as soon as Berninger
moved on. This episode, like
so many in the show, was both
indulgent and bizarre. I don’t
quite know why Berninger’s
physical exhortations were so
irritating, but maybe the raw,
unassuming quality of Barnett’s
performance primed me with a
low tolerance for theatrics.
Barnett outdoes
National at Hill
MIRIAM FRANCISCO
Daily Arts Writer
CONCERT REVIEW
Read more at michigandaily.com
Yesterday
Universal Pictures
Michigan Theater