Yellow
Submarine
I have an
odd relation with The Beatles, and its one which I imagine I have in common
with much of my generation. The greatness of The Beatles is taken as written
in stone, so their material is canonical as the symphonies of Mozart and
Beethoven. Now I buy an awful lot of music, but I have never bought a Beatles
album (I do have a pinched copy of my parents Revolver). It would seem
odd to me, almost an admission of my own musical naiveté. That said,
I acknowledge that pretty much all of their work was pretty darn good.
With the exception of the song Yellow Submarine.
I could
have got away with buying some Beatles on the Sunday afternoon I went to
see Yellow Submarine at the NFT. I had done a rushed piece of second hand
record shopping, only managing to snaffle up items from one section of
the shop. My haul of Bowie, Blur and The Byrds probably suggests what section
it was. Luckily in the animated film of Yellow Submarine, the title tune
is slid out early, never to darken our door again. Musically, the film
contains material from the mid period of the Beatles, primarily from Sgt
Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band, and of those the more simplistic singalong
tunes are preferred. This means you get the oompah of "When I'm 64", the
twisting in on itself "Nowhere Man" and a portentous playing of "Eleanor
Rigby" at the very beginning. It is however the psychedelia we are here
for, the colours.
Whilst the
animation is Yellow Submarine is relatively crude, it is highly stylised.
It has a touch of the Terry Gilliam cut and paste, mixed with a very hippie
colour scheme. This is a bright film, which survives on its visuals, which
are initially very imaginative but even they conform to a house style by
the end. It is only through some of the songs we get the best of the animation:
in particular the Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds piece is a bravura piece
of kinetic experimentation. It is these moments where the film is an absolute
joy, coupled with the best of the Beatles material you cannot help but
be impressed. It is a very fresh movie in those moments.
It is lucky
to have those moments, because the story is merely a piece of surreal pap,
existing solely to join the dots between the various tunes. These songs
were not written for this purpose, and so in fifty percent of the cases
some plot point is invented to give us a reason to play "When I'm 64".
Whilst the story is rubbish, and pretty unengaging the same cannot be said
for the main characters - ie The Beatles and Boob, the nowhere man. As
loathe as I am to use the 'Lovable Scousers' card, that is exactly what
The Beatles are presented as here. It has a nice line in self parody, and
a lot of the deadpan verbal humour is rather good. There are enough laughs
in the film to at least justify its existence beyond a set of linked music
videos.
In the mid
sixties the music promo did not exist. So much of the work in Yellow Submarine
can be seen as prototypes for said form. It can also be viewed in the canon
of animated films, where its extremely distinctive visual style gives it
a degree of importance, as well as its place as an artefact very much of
its time. The story is simplistic and episodic, and could really only appeal
to a child, which is fine because in a lot of ways this is aimed at young
children (the songs chosen are certainly those which have been most appropriated
by School Music teachers). In the end though as a film it does not quite
work, and given the opportunity to see discrete chunks of it rather than
the whole thing, it would be more impressive. Still, it might get me past
my block, and I might finally get round to buying a Beatles record soon.
(6)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: The surreal lunacy of Help! mixed with something
a little bit more far out, possibly an old Felix the Cat cartoon dripped
with day-glo.
