Yesterday

The Beatles were an omnipresent presence, absorbed through osmosis. Danny Boyle's "Yesterday," which envisions a world without the worldwide-famous band Beatles, made us ponder what it would be like to hear the song "Yesterday" for the first time and how life would unfold without the band's existence.

The plot of the movie "Yesterday" (2019) revolves around a struggling musician named Jack Malik, played by Himesh Patel. After a mysterious global blackout, Jack wakes up to find himself in a world where the Beatles never existed. Realizing that he is the only person who remembers their songs, he decides to reintroduce their music to the world and pass it off as his own.

Jack becomes a worldwide sensation almost instantaneously, but the absence of the Beatles would have had a ripple effect. It's inaccurate to assume that if it hadn't been the Beatles, someone else would have filled their shoes. Culture doesn't work that way. So much of it is about lightning not striking twice, the perfect alignment of time, place, and people. It had to be Ringo, George, Paul, and John.

It's thought-provoking when Jack performs Beatles songs at coffee shop gigs, and nobody even pays attention. The music has no impact on these individuals. What if the absence of the Beatles had shaped the world so differently that people would be oblivious to what they were missing and simply not care because they never had it? These ideas are tantalizingly present, which "Yesterday" delves into perfectly.

Release: 2019

Stars: Himesh Patel, Lily James, Sophia Di Martino

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 63%