Yesterday, I watched the movie Yesterday while pinned in the window seat by a Swiss couple. The premise of the movie, more or less, asks what would happen if a single mediocre songwriter who somehow landed in a parallel universe where The Beatles hadn’t been successful and plagiarized their work—are the songs themselves good enough to make any talented(ish) musician famous? As you might expect, it’s complicated. At the very least, you’d impress your friends with The Beatles’ heart-penetrating lyrics.
It was a sweet film and if could only use one sentence to review it, I doubt I could do better than the critics’ consensus on Rotten Tomatoes which said, “Yesterday may fall short of fab, but the end result is still a sweetly charming fantasy with an intriguing—albeit somewhat under-explored—premise.” Is it a great movie? No. However, there are a few touching scenes sprinkled throughout the rest of the rather mediocre and predictable film that make it feel like it could have been something special. The scene which twanged my heart in particular went something like this: two lifelong, best friends have been in love with each other for their whole lives, though neither ever made a move; both now are sitting in a train-station café: one is ready to part ways, the other is confessing his love—or, at least, he’s trying to; time is running out…. And action.
Ellie Appleton:
And how do you think it’s going so far?
Jack Malik:
It’s not great, but…
Ellie Appleton:
No, no, let me try and help. You’ve had twenty years to make your move.
Jack Malik:
Well, I couldn’t exactly make my move when I was seven.
Ellie Appleton:
Then you’ve had ten years.
Jack Malik:
Right. Well, we’ve always been like brother and sister. It’s very bad indeed for brothers and sisters to have sex.
Ellie Appleton:
Except that we’re not brother and sister.
Jack Malik:
No, exactly. Right, but…
Ellie Appleton:
No, so, I’ve been waiting half my life for you to wake up and love me. Having loved you for half a lifetime, I realized when you left, that I had made a bad choice doing that. And now, it’s got even trickier because when you were playing in pubs, we were the perfect match. But now, I’m an actual schoolteacher in actual Lowestoft, and you’re the world’s greatest singer-songwriter.
Jack Malik:
No, I’m not.
Ellie Appleton:
Except that you probably are.
[I cut some of the scene out. It poorly broke the tension with comedy.]
Ellie Appleton:
In the end, to you, I’ll always really just be Ellie with the frizzy hair. And Ellie from the “fun chum” column. Ellie, who, for reasons no one understands, drives you around in her car. So, just go and please just catch your plane.
Jack Malik:
We haven’t finished the conversation.
Ellie Appleton:
Well, um, we have. We have. Unless, in Liverpool Lime Street, at 11:14 on a Friday, unless you choose to stay.
[Jack is interrupted by Rocky holding up his phone with Debra Facetiming. Again, done poorly.]
Debra Hammer:
Jack. Jack, you have to get on the plane. What are you still doing in Liverpool?
Jack Malik:
I can’t stay today. I’ve got to do The Late Late Show tomorrow, and I’ve got to do the Marketing Meeting of Meetings, and, oh, it’s ridiculous…
Ellie Appleton:
And that was your chance. Now, quick, go. Please, leave.
Jack stands up, turns his back on Ellie, and stomps out muttering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” as the door closes behind him, and he leaves.
Like I said, Yesterday is a rather predictable movie so you can probably guess how Ellie and Jack land at the end of the movie but even so, this scene has been stuck in my head for the past day now and that makes it worthwhile in itself, especially if you need to kill a few hours on an eleven-hour flight.