When you see Paul, Ringo, John, and George in "Hard Days Night", you really see yourself thirty-five years ago - brash, egotistical, flighty, and rebellious. In seeing their rise to stardom amidst the adulation and fanfare, you see also your own rise to being whomever you are now. This is a joyous return to pure showmanship that didn't need a corporate sponsor and to a dream-like state where wishes do come true. Sadly, there are truths which reverberate with the familiar tunes they play so well. When they are not performing, you see the images of lonely young men running away from commitment, from the mundane and stilted lives around them, and running to their elusive girls and their elusive freedom. On the train, they can't help poking fun at a middle age man who insists on doing everything his way. On an open field, they frolic as children in a playground that the owner regards as closed. In a police station, they see conformity and they are chased not merely by cops but by their very authority. Yet when they are performing, you see the bright laughter in their faces and the enjoyment of what they do best. There are no second takes from outsiders because they follow only their own intimate direction. "Hard Days Night" is not merely a running monologue about young men trying to stay sane even as their admirers surround them with their insanity. It is a true-to-life look at possibilities, some real and some not real. When Paul's fictitious grandfather asked Ringo to put down his book and to start 'marching', the film is telegraphing that same message to us - to put down the conventional and look at the unconventional. The only thing that could have made this film better is if they had sung "Imagine", the most admired tune of the last half century. "Hard Days Night" takes us back thirty five years and it too ask us to imagine what life could have been like.
Review of A Hard Day's Night
