Yesterday

“Yesterday” is a new movie about a struggling singer-songwriter named Jack Malik (played by Himesh Patel). Jack lives in an English seaside town who is not achieving the fame and fortune for which he has long hoped. Only his childhood best friend Ellie (Lily James) seems to believe in his talent. During a mysterious global blackout, Jack is hit by a bus while riding his bicycle, and wakes up to discover that, despite his memory to the contrary, from the perspective of the rest of the world, The Beatles do not appear to have ever existed. When Jack tries to search for them on Google, he comes up with information on beetles. A search for “John, Paul, George, and Ringo” turns up Pope John Paul, and a search for Sgt.  Pepper leads him to information about red peppers. Other popular things that have seemingly also disappeared are cigarettes, Coke (there is only Pepsi) and Harry Potter.

Of course, all this means that his old Beatles albums have mysteriously disappeared into thin air, but as time passes, he is able to remember and play the entire early Beatles songbook. Since no one is familiar with any of this work, they believe that Jack has written all of it, and he becomes an international star. Kate McKinnon, with whom you might be familiar as one of the cast members of Saturday Night Live, plays an incredibly aggressive agent who latches on to Jack.

I do not want to spoil the movie by telling you how it all ends, but do recommend it as a simply joyful couple of hours, something we all seem to need these days.

Love,

Rebecca