if you look for meaning in a standard format

veluciofilms

Of course the film is packaged within the most basic, cliched even, romcom format. Childhood sweethearts never expressed love for each other, then something happens, their relationship gets strained, until love wins and is declared publicly.

This isn't a whodunnit, you can guess the ending from the trailer. You will have seen countless films like this and you come to expect everything that happens to happen. Just as you expect a chorus after a verse in a Beatles song. Or any other pop song.

But within that outer layer there is a very interesting subject that the film explores: what if we lost something that brings us all together? What if we didn't have a shared cultural experience to which we all give the same meaning?

When the blackout happens, the Beatles are not the only thing that disappears from public memory: Jack googles "coke" and the search engine - which is what gives Meaning these days - displays a picture of Pablo Escobar. So when Jack asks a waitress for coke, it is not a ubiquitous beverage that the woman thinks of.

And so Jack finds himself with the opportunity to gain fame and riches by appropriating what had been a pillar of our post-war popular culture globally: the Beatles catalogue. Because the true premise of the film is this: everyone likes the Beatles. And Beatles songs therefore can be used by us all to communicate with each other.

Soon though Jack finds that the music has lost its universal meaning for the people who now appreciate "his" music. He is confronted with the ruthless pragmatism of the music industry, all the while being isolated by his alien cultural baggage and climb to fame.

So when he reunites with the only two other people unaffected by the blackout, he finds that meaning again, and the plot finally twists.

This isn't a film about the Beatles' music, it isn't a documentary about their legacy - it's a film about a world suddenly losing shared experience, about losing a "consensus" that brought us together.

That's why I thought the ending, the other part of the ending, the one I'm not going to spoil, was so uplifting and progressive. Go watch it.

score 8/10

veluciofilms 4 July 2019

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4976054/