Yesterday
Richard Curtis films present a joyous and widely exportable vision of Britain: everything gleaming and not much grit, and the suffering is normally of a romantic kind. The effect is to send the audience back into the world satisfied that the dream of happy life and love is just a few plot-twists away. Sometimes, as with About Time , Curtis tarries with very light sci-fi notions, which is topical. Director Danny Boyle has confronted the yearning for happiness in a number of ways: sometimes through intravenous injection of hard drugs ; winning the lottery; winning the Indian Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and getting Freida Pinto; cutting your arm off to free yourself after being trapped by a boulder… Oh, and ruling Apple with single-minded and evil self-belief… So when you hear that Richard Curtis and Danny Boyle have made a film about a Britain where only one man can remember the songs of The Beatles, you know it’s bound to be fascinating and maybe also crazy. The Beatles dom...