Yesterday: Cutting Ana De Armas’ Character

Yesterday, Danny Boyle’s new feature film starring Himesh Patel and the lovely Lily James, came out mere days ago across the world. While not perfect, Yesterday is certainly an enjoyable evening filled with beloved Beatles music.

We are not going to traditionally review this film; rather, we’ll focus on a more specific decision that came when putting out the final cut of Yesterday. Originally, the film had Ana De Armas in it; her character, Roxanne, would have come as an obstacle to the love story between Lily James’s character Ellie and Himesh Patel’s character Jack. Ana De Armas can even be seen in some of the final trailers for the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-oSPImpxg

Danny Boyle, Yesterday‘s director, explained his decision for the cut.

That was a very traumatic cut, because she was brilliant in it. I mean really radiant. And [that] turned out to be the problem. … I think the audience likes the story [about Ellie and Jack] and goes with that, and it works out well. What we’d originally done was had, I don’t want to describe it too much, but had Ana De Armas as a complicating factor when he arrived in L.A. for the first time. And I think the audience did not like the fact that his eyes even strayed. Because then some people would go, ‘Oh, he really doesn’t deserve her. He really doesn’t deserve Lily.’ You know, it’s one of those things where it’s some of our favorite scenes from the film, but we had to cut them for the sake of the whole.

So, from our somewhat objective perspective after watching the film, was cutting the character the right decision?

(Before we even attempt to answer this, we need to mention that, obviously, we haven’t seen a version of Yesterday with Roxanne still in it. So it’s impossible to make any conclusions with absolute certainty. Also, SPOILERS for Yesterday follow bellow.)

And yet, keeping that in mind, we believe that cutting the character was, in fact, a very smart decision that benefited the film greatly. This is because of two main reasons.

One, cutting the character slightly breaks the traditional rom-com narrative.

Roxanne would have served as a plot-device. Boyle basically confirms it above. She would have been yet another obstacle in the eventual relationship between Jack and Lily and would have served as not much else. Presumably, she also would have put a deeper representation on Jack’s life after he’s famous and rich and put forward the complications and vices that come with his life in L.A. However, by cutting Roxanne, the story remains slightly more precise and focused on two things: the general ‘Beatles don’t exist’ storyline and the relationship between Jack and Ellie. A traditional rom-com would have many more storytelling devices thrown within those two focus points; Roxanne would have probably been such a device. And Yesterday wants to be more than a traditional rom-com.

Cutting the character makes the story between Jack and Ellie more compelling and truthful.

Yesterday, while not flawless, does one thing really well – the love story between Jack and Ellie. It’s beautiful and truthful; it’s complicated and exciting and uncertain – just as a relationship such as theirs would be in real life. There is enough depth to explore in that already. Adding a character in that love triangle would not give to this relationship, but rather take away. It would take away the focus and the sweetness of the characters when they are with each other. And that focus and sweetness is the best thing about Yesterday.

Is there anything that the film loses from the cut?

A slight narrative mistake occurs because of the cut. Bear with us here because this is a bit complicated. One can see in the trailers that Roxanne is with Jack at The Late Late Show. In the film, that scene is entirely cut. They make a great point that The Late Late Show is on Friday and the Major Marketing Meeting of Meetings is on Saturday; because of the cut, the meeting is the first thing shown after Jack returns from Liverpool to LA.

This would have been fine, a viewer could have just assumed that they just didn’t show the interview that happened on Friday, but then Jack has a dream about The Beatles coming to said James Corden interview. This dream comes after the Major Marketing Meeting of Meetings. Because the original interview was cut (because Roxanne was in that, as we can see in the trailers), but they decided to keep the dream and put that after the meeting, it seems as if the meeting comes before the interview, even through it was specifically mentioned by Jack’s manager that he has the interview first.

It’s a small detail, a small mistake, and one that wouldn’t bother anyone who didn’t notice. But we did notice, even before we knew another character was originally supposed to be in that narrative. And it did bother us, slightly.

But not so much that we’d want Roxanne is the movie.

Yesterday is just fine the way it is. It didn’t need another character device – the story, especially the love portion of it, comes across well and the viewers get the emotional depth of it. More would have been unnecessary and, plainly put, cheesy. Jack and Ellie’s relationship is great the way it is in the final cut. So, to those Ana De Armas die-hard fans out there we have this to say:

Let it be.

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Nostalgic after Yesterday? Miss The Beatles? We do, too. Here’s where you can get some of their music to enjoy again and forever.

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— Pouty Boy

Tags: ana de armas, beatles, character, cut, danny boyle, lily james, roxanne, yesterday