postPerspective Update

Yesterday director Danny Boyle
By Iain Blair

Yesterday, everyone knew The Beatles. Today, only a struggling singer-songwriter from a tiny English town remembers their songs. That’s the brilliant-yet-simple setup for Yesterday,
the new rock ’n’ roll comedy from Academy Award-winning director Danny Boyle and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Richard Curtis.

Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is the struggling musician whose dreams of fame are rapidly fading, despite the fierce devotion and support of his childhood best friend/ manager, Ellie (Lily James). But after a freak bus accident during a mysterious global blackout, Jack wakes up to discover that he is the only one that remembers The Beatles and their music. Because of this, his career gets supercharged when he ditches his own mediocre songs and instead starts performing hit after hit by the Fab Four — as if he’d written them.

Yesterday co-stars Ed Sheeran and James Corden (playing themselves) and Emmy Award-winner Kate McKinnon as Jack’s Hollywood agent. Along with new versions of The Beatles’ most beloved hits, Yesterday features a seasoned group of collaborators, including DP Christopher Ross, editor Jon Harris, music producer Adem Ilhan and composer Daniel Pemberton.

I recently spoke with Boyle, whose eclectic credits include Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, A Life Less Ordinary, Steve Jobs and 127 Hours, about making the film and his workflow.

This comes across as a very uplifting and quite emotional film.
I’m glad you said that, as I thought this whole simple idea of this global amnesia about The Beatles and all their songs was just so glorious and wonderful — just like listening to one of their songs. It really moved me, and especially the scene at the end. That affected me in a very personal way. It’s about the wonder of cinema and its relationship to time, and film is the only art form that really looks at time in such detail because film is time. And that relates directly to editing, where you’re basically compressing time, stretching it, speeding it up, freezing it — and even stopping it. No other art form can do that.

The other amazing aspect of film is that going to the movies is also an expression of time. The audience says, “I’m yours for the next two hours,” and in return you give them time that’s manipulated and squeezed and stretched, and even stopped.