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Yellow Submarine More at IMDbPro »

This film is no fiction, 18 June 2009

Author: teledyn from Canada

Pepperland. A far-away fable of a land where people are charming, where string quartets of seniors can sit in the park, flowers in bloom everywhere, butterflies drift by while children dance and play in the sunshine.

You and I remember Pepperland, but it seems so very long ago. The songwriter Randy Newman puts it at Dayton Ohio, 1903. "Long ago when things could grow, the air was clean and you could see, and folks was nice to you" -- our Pepperland was a time when bandstand gazebos in public parks were put to use and the music there enjoyed by all.

The Blue Meanies could not tolerate such open joy. It irked their sense of Order and Control. They sent in the Butterfly Stompers, Hidden Persuaders, Hungry Turks, and the 10 foot barristers they called the Apple Bonkers. Music, the open and shared music commons that gave the sense of community and culture, was collected up and locked away, guarded by dogs and goons, and the cultural heroes enclosed and silenced. Soon Pepperland too was silent, cold as stone, a tear in an eye here and there the only life to be found.

But look around. This is not fiction.

Everyone decries the decay of our civilization. Pollution, crime, vandalism, distrust, lockdowns in the schools, deadbolts on the doors, the homeless everywhere, endless demonstrations, lawyers and regulators at every turn. What happened? How did we get so bonked? As Soft Machine sang, "Why are we sleeping?"

When I recruit players for our community band I tell them of Yellow Submarine. I remind them of that scene where the lads from Liverpool must tip-toe in the night, up past the guards and their dogs, their urgent mission up the hill to break into the sealed-up grand bandstand and the bandroom where the ancient brass-band gear of Sargeant Pepper's band is locked away.

"What happens next," I tell them, "is what WE do." Our job, as community musicians, is to sustain Pepperland.

Marshall Allen tells us, "If you want a better world, you must make a better music." Once upon a time, our streets, our parks and our communities were filled with music. Music we made ourselves, music we made together, for ourselves and our neighbours.

Yellow Submarine is a call to arms; you say you want a Revolution? Unlock the bandrooms, grab the old uniforms, STRIKE UP THE BAND! The Stompers, the Persuaders, the Barrister Bonkers, even the Blue Meanies themselves and their right-hand glovemen cannot stand up to the power of music to bring back the love and wake the people. We all want to change the world, but dig: what good is revolution if you can't dance to it!

By now you've already figured out I'm a huge fan of this film; it's been on my top-films since I saw it in the theatres the first time around. There is already powerful magic in this film, and this new re-release has done more magic of its own to bring the original vision into the twenty-first century. The sound is incredible, the colours astounding, and the added footage completely justified.

Unless you are buried bonked under a mountain of green apples, and especially if you are, you should commit this film to memory, because THIS is how it is done, how we get out of our current societal mess, how we get back to where we once belonged.

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