…and, having just discussed John Lennon seconds before, they don’t mention Yesterday‘s most penetrating, head-turning scene? Because…what, they don’t want to spoil? The movie came out over three months ago. Spoiler whiners haven’t a leg to stand on after 90 days. I would have been completely fascinated to hear McCartney’s reaction.

From “Faker From The Heart,” posted on 6.29.19: “I did, however, like one thing about Yesterday. Tremendously, I mean. Around the two-thirds or three-quarters mark comes a scene that I hadn’t read about in reviews, and it totally blew my mind.

“SPOILER TIME: When Jack knocks on the door of a ramshackle beach house and a 78 year-old John Lennon (played by Robert Carlyle and transformed with just the right facial makeup and exactly the right kind of granny glasses) answers, it felt like a huge gut-slam. (A woman sitting near me cried out.) Because this is an alternate universe in which John Winston Lennon never became a rock star, and so he lived 38 years longer than he did in actuality. (And may be around for many years to come.) When John tells Jack how old he is, Jack goes ‘whoa!’, which is a way of saying ‘wow, of course, you were never shot to death so you lived a full and long life!’

“But how full was it? Maybe from the 78 year-old Lennon’s perspective it was happy and full enough, but you’re also thinking ‘this version of John never tasted the blazing, eccentric highs and devastating lows and occasional inspirational tsunamis that colored the life of the other one…this guy lived happily but modestly and perhaps (who knows?) a little sleepily.’ Right away you’re thinking of Neil Young‘s “My My, Hey Hey” and the ‘better to burn out than to fade away’ line.”