Yesterday

We go to the cinema on Sunday afternoon. Yes, afternoon. So it must be a Rom Com? Indeed. So why am I here? Perhaps it’s because there’s a great plot idea that comes with it. Yesterday is a collaboration between Richard Curtis and Danny Boyle.

Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is a wannabe rock star from Lowestoft, who works in a warehouse and plays the occasional gig in local pubs. Although he did once play on a minor stage at Latitude to about half a dozen passer-bys.

At the start of the film he is hit by a bus while the world is experiencing some sort of cosmic blackout... He comes to in a parallel universe where the Beatles never existed. Other things have been erased too but sadly there are very few diversions into this territory.

He finds out about the Beatles-less universe when he plays ‘Yesterday’ to his mates, who are stunned at his brilliance, having never heard the song before. It appears that he is the only one who remembers their music.

Being the only person to have the entire Beatles back catalogue in their head is only the second greatest thing that has ever happened to him. The first being that his best mate and manager by default is Ellie Appleton (Lily James) and she is totally in love with him.

Of course, as this is a Rom Com, he is oblivious to this fact and, as this is a Rom Com, he’s in love with her too but, as this is a Rom Com, neither of them are able to articulate their feelings for each other. Therefore they have apparently been stuck in this platonic stasis for the many many years since they met at school. Notwithstanding of course that a girl like Ellie would have been getting multiple alternative offers every week. Anyhow... did I mention it’s a Rom Com?

Jack now starts to painstakingly recreate as many Beatles songs as he can from memory, as Google is no help whatsoever. While Ellie, who also organised his Latitude gig, sets him up with Gavin (Alexander Arnold), a local music producer, who records a demo of his new songs.

This gets him onto local TV where he is talented spotted by none other than Ed Sheeran, who asks him to open for him in Russia. Sheeran ably demonstrates why he is a musician and not an actor but gets huge kudos for being game enough to make such a cameo performance even if he does attempt to sabotage ‘Hey Jude’.

So off Jack goes to Russia with his unreliable roadie Rocky (Joel Fry) but not Ellie who has to return to her day job as a teacher.

So far so good and so entertaining but it starts to go off the rails when the film sells its soul to the get rich quick style of the modern music industry with Jack allowing himself to be cynically packaged by Sheeran’s LA based manager Debra Hammer (Kate McKinnon). Oh to have allowed his fame to grow organically in this country.

Jack does come home to launch his debut album in Norfolk with a rooftop concert in Gorleston-on-Sea. It is there that he is approached by two other people who also remember the Beatles and who thank him for saving the band’s music. They also give him the address of John Lennon (Robert Carlyle) who Jack goes to visit. It’s not really clear why this is included or what his association with the non-existent Beatles would have been. Clearly Lennon has not had a career in music and he persuades Jack not to have one either. Instead he advises him to get his woman back, who has by now run off with Gavin, the music producer.

If this is ridiculous, the ending is worse with a mortifying public declaration of love during a hastily arranged concert at Wembley Stadium where Jack also admits he stole the songs from people who don’t exist.

In reality this creates more questions than it answers. Like... so Jack can you remember any more? etc. He did also have the whole of Oasis’s catalogue to work through.

I know, I should accept it as it is.

Himesh Patel is a total star, not only with his acting but with his singing and guitar playing. As for Jack, recreating the Beatles songs musically is a massive achievement and arguably more difficult than writing them in the first place. So clearly Ed Sheeran was right, he is a better musician than him and he really had no need whatsoever to become a music teacher.

Exasperatingly enjoyable.

127 Hours

Tonight '127 Hours'. A film I fancied seeing but was unsure as to whether I could get through it. I warn my partner that I'll probably faint on her.

Danny Boyle's film tells the true story of Aron Ralston (James Franco), a reckless young adventurer who spends his weekends bombing around America’s wilderness.

The film opens with Ralston packing his gear, but unfortunately not his Swiss Army knife, for a trek into Blue John Canyon in Utah. He jumps on his mountain bike and is off determined to traverse his route 45 minutes quicker than the guide book suggests is feasible.



After a stint on his bike, he’s locks it up and continues on foot, running. It’s a fast moving start to the film and the pace doesn’t let up when he rescues two female hikers Kristi (Kate Mara) and Megan (Amber Tamblyn) who are lost. This, you get the impression, is the speed at which Ralson lives his life.

He spends time walking with the girls, showing them his beloved canyons and how to drop, rather scarily, into an underground pool, where they spend a while repeating the drop and swimming.



Then just as quickly he says goodbye to them and heads off on his own canyoneering. 'We did not even feature in his day' they say, disappointed. Before he departs they invite him to a party, look for the huge Scooby Doo they tell him, but they know he won’t show. Ralson is his own man. Little did he know that they could well have been the last two people he ever saw.

Then the pace slows down, as he takes a tumble, a boulder falls on him and traps his arm. He makes frantic efforts to pull himself free but gradually it dawns on him that he is stuck and this is where he will stay, and we will stay with him, for the next 127 hours.



Ralston, being the sort of guy he is, had not told anyone of his plans and therefore assumes no one will come looking for him. It is just him, the boulder and a fight to survive. He starts chipping away at the rock with the only knife he has, a cheap one, ‘what you'd get if you bought a $15 flashlight and got a free multi tool’. It doesn’t help.

He spends the next five days eking out his water supply and when that runs out, he has to drink his own urine. Because this is Danny Boyle we get to see this from the inside of Ralston's water pack.

Ralston re-examines his own life, philosophises, battles the elements, hallucinates and even fantasies for the best part of four days. Some of it is real in flashback, some of it wishful and hopeful thinking.

Dehydrated and delirious, we see him wonder about the two hikers and there are also a few Scooby Doo induced illusions about the party he's been invited to. Whether this is the same party as the naked one he imagines in a people carrier I’m not sure.

In fact, it’s so terribly ‘Black Swan’ (that we saw yesterday) at times. Two consecutive days, two films, two lots of hallucinations.

He thinks about his ex-girlfriend (Clémence Poésy), who dumped him for being too self centred. His ex turns out to be no other than Fleur Weasley nee Delacouer, we saw her get married last year. These Harry Potter people get everywhere.

He also feels regret. Regret at not returning his mother’s phone calls and for not seeing enough of his family. Regret at not telling anyone where he was going. Whoops. He does a darkly humorous talk show style interview with himself on his camera admitting this failure. Then he carves his name, along with his dates of birth and death, into the canyon wall before videotaping his last goodbyes.



Throughout his time stuck in the canyon we have seen his life perspective change from being a total loner to suddenly include other people, his family, his friends, the two female hikers, even his ex. Together they have given him the will to survive.

Finally he decides he has the courage and the means to extract himself from his predicament, whilst we wonder what we would do if placed in similar circumstances. Problem is you know what's coming. You know how all this ends before you even step foot in the cinema, hence my partner’s initial reluctance.

Ralston starts to amputate his trapped arm at the elbow. First he snaps the bones because he knows he won't be able to cut through them. It’s enough to make you feel faint as it’s all captured painfully on screen. I tried to look away but oddly couldn’t. At which point I believe I blacked out. Oops.

Then without an arm, Ralson still has to abseil out of the canyon and walk out of the valley, where at least he gets to drink from a lake. Finally he encounters a Dutch couple on holiday who help him get rescued.

It’s a tribute to Boyle that he kept us engaged in the film for the length of Ralson's ordeal, the boulder incident occurs very early in the film, but he does. Once trapped, the film becomes a one man show starring James Franco and his facial expressions. Franco puts in a brilliant performance. The camera is right in his face the whole time and shows us graphically as the situation gradually takes its toll on him. In the end 127 hours turns out to be less a film about a man who cuts off his arm and more one about why a man cuts off his arm. It’s a performance that ought to snatch the Oscar out of Colin Firth’s hands but we’ll see.

Ralston survived and lived happily ever after but how many of us would have died in that canyon?

He now has an artificial arm, his real arm was eventually retrieved by park authorities and cremated by Ralston, who then went back to the canyon to scatter the ashes there.

127 Hours is an experience that I survived. I think. Unforgettable, for several reasons.

Time to put my head under the cold tap, grab something to eat, and get a stiff drink.