31 Movies of May, Day 8: A Hard Day's Night

May 8th viewing: A Hard Day’s Night, chosen by my late night wanderings on the Criterion Channel

Year of Release: 1964

Directed by: Richard Lester

Written by: Alun Owen

Starring: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Wilfrid Brambell, Norman Rossington, John Junkin

Accompanying Beverage of Choice: Ghost Ride (Kölsch, 4.9% ABV) - Revolution Brewing, Chicago, Illinois
(Support Independent Breweries - buy local when getting buzzed during quarantine)

Damn, the Beatles look young in this movie.

I mean, I suppose that is because the Beatles ARE young in this movie. Ringo Starr celebrated his 24th birthday the day A Hard Day’s Night was released in the UK. John Lennon was 23, Paul McCartney had just turned 22, and George Harrison was a baby of a 21-year-old. College kids. They’re all basically college kids.

It’s a weird realization, probably based in the paucity of live-action footage of the Beatles that I’ve previously seen in my life. I’ve seen lots of stills, lots of album covers, and of course listened to their music. But this viewing of A Hard Day’s Night was really the first time I had watched the heyday-era Beatles for more than just fleeing moments in montage footage. 

I’m sure there’s also some of the same phenomenon going on that makes me think that the characters in Friends are always going to be at least a decade older than me, despite the fact that I guess they’re supposed to be in their 20’s for most of the show? I don’t know, I never watched much Friends. But the mental image of people you grew up viewing as adults pretty much always anchors them as your elders in your mind, regardless of whether that’s the truth for any given situation.

And the situation here is actually pretty juvenile! Pretty much the whole duration of A Hard Day’s Night is spent watching the Beatles mess with people and dodging responsibility. This isn’t a movie about craft or effort - it’s not called A Hard Day’s Work, after all. What it is, is a pretty breezy hangout film, built on the Beatles mocking any adult who enters their path and goofing off with anybody who could be considered a peer. They are only contrasted well against Paul McCartney’s fictional grandfather, a sort of elderly scofflaw who puts into focus how largely harmless the Beatles’ tomfoolery actually is.

More than anything else, the jokey antics of the fictionalized Beatles on film reminded me of a GQ profile of Justin Bieber written by Drew Magary in 2012. Bieber was 18 at the time of the profile, which is only a few years younger than John Paul George + Ringo but an age several lifetimes inferior in human development, so he of course comes off as more immature. The entire profile paints Bieber as a total putz, and a hubristic one at that, given that Magary is not exactly the writer you bring in to do image rehab for a spoiled teen pop star. But the Bieber described in Magary’s profile actually seems eerily similar to the class clown versions of themselves that the Beatles play here - the only difference is that the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night are backed up by the wit of an Oscar-nominated screenplay, whereas Bieber’s antics are just the self-scripted lines of a dumbass 18-year-old.

So it’s going to be yet another level of weird for me in 10 or 20 years, the first time I cross paths with a teenager who views the Biebs as “old.” I highly doubt the teenagers of 2032 are going to be reading 20-year-old GQ pieces, but I’m sure at least one kid somewhere is going to stumble across that Bieber profile, stare at that cover photo of a 2010’s pop stara looking like he just stepped out of a suit fitting at a Gymboree store, and associate him primarily with a 38-year-old tatted washout. Justin Bieber is now and forever more the same age as the cast of Friends.