Across the Universe

Across the Universe is a love story and musical with creative interpretations of Beatles classics. Critics looker for deeper meaning seem to forget this simple fact. Incredible cameos by Joe Cocker, Bono, and an earth-shattering Gospel version of 'Let it Be', are all in themselves reason enough to see the film. I was lucky enough to see this recently at the historic Elgin theater in Toronto. Julie Taymor is one of the most eloquent directors I've heard to date. Not only has this film advanced the art of film-based musicals, it will most certainly get the Oscar nod and introduce a legion of new young fans to the Beatles. I for one can't wait to see and experience it again!

I saw a sold-out opening night screening of "Across the Universe" last night with a group of my friends who had really been looking forward to it. Many of them were extremely disappointed, while in the critical world, Roger Ebert and the New York Times loved it. Because the film was so highly anticipated, and a number of people have asked me how I liked it, I'm writing this review in an attempt to express why the movie is so divisive. I'm not going to talk about plot, or describe any of the numbers. If you're interested in seeing the movie, they'll be more enjoyable if they're unexpected.

It's a bizarre and beautiful movie musical, almost a music video at times, that uses thirty- three of The Beatles' songs and director Julie Taymor's unique visual style to illustrate both a personal love story and the overall conflict in the sixties. The movie is incredibly original and ambitious, and therefore its failings are as dramatic as its successes. Both stem from the same source: Julie Taymor's self-indulgence. That's nothing new to her movies, "Frida" and "Titus" have the same problem, but in a movie stripped of traditional narrative, it's glaringly obvious. Some songs are impeccably chosen and staged with great creativity, but others are too obvious, or thematically forced so Taymor can cram in another song and stunning visual sequence.

For the first half of the movie, I was frequently divided. One innovative sequence would really pull me into the style, then a forced number or awkward staging would distance me again. When an obvious, recognizable number began, I was torn between a cynical impulse to roll my eyes and an almost exhilarated impulse to laugh and applaud.

"Across the Universe" is a mess. There's no denying that. It is poorly paced and badly structured, and at times its feather-light plot and contrived or obligatory numbers become tedious. But at one point, about halfway through, I decided just to go along for the ride. I delighted in every brash, bold choice, whether it worked or not. I let the poignant moments move me, whether or not I intellectually felt that they were contrived.

The Beatles' music had a huge effect on me; from the fateful day that my friend accidentally copied the first three tracks of "Revolver" onto my computer, a love affair was born. Their songs are inexorably tied to memories beautiful and horrible scattered all over my life, and as I grow older, I'm constantly discovering new, deeper resonances in their familiar refrains. Even when the context was vague or stretched, the film's reinterpreting and revealing new facets of these songs seemed to serve as a tribute to their breadth and greatness. Taymor's damning depiction of the horrors of war, and lyrical portrait of young, idealistic love are both painfully expressive and unique, and simply took my breath away. By the film's shamelessly corny close, I realized that I had just had a genuine cinematic experience. For all the movies that I watch, that's incredibly rare.

In his review in the New York Times, Stephen Holden writes, "I realized that falling in love with a movie is like falling in love with another person. Imperfections, however glaring, become endearing quirks once you've tumbled." I could laughingly list this movie's flaws from now till next week, but I sort of fell in love with its sheer audacity. You might not. It's extremely naïve, and thematically simple, and you could find that endearing or irritating. You may love it, or you may hate it, but you're going to feel something. This movie will not change your life; don't expect it to. But if you let your criticism fade to the background, and abandon yourself to Taymor's passionate fervor, you may have a pretty amazing experience.

This film is one of the most bipolar cinematic experiences I've had since George Lucas's 1971 minimalist masterpiece THX-1138 was recut with goofy CGI inserts.

First let's talk about the main gimmick of "Across the Universe": it's a musical using modern remakes of Beatles songs. Some of these new versions, along with very compelling, bold and surreal visuals, are sheer poetry which I'm sure the fab 4 themselves would applaud. But then suddenly get a random toe tapper, full of melodramatic yet sterile vocals (you can hear the auto-tune working overtime) that have no place in the story but for some hastily contrived subplot to serve as a setup for a Beatles crowd pleaser. Yes, I'm talking about the cringeworthy "Dear Prudence" where a minor character with only 10 lines in the whole film randomly locks herself in a bathroom until everyone sings her to come out because the character's name is? Prudence.

On the other hand, I loved Bono's bizarre, humorous and wittily fitting appearance as "Doctor Robert", a self-proclaimed electric messiah who apparently comes to parties with his own personal PA system (or is it a Mr. Microphone cranked to 11?) as he sings to the crowd's orgasmic oohs, "I Am the Walrus".

Another highlight is a very simple, touching and heart-rending version of "Let It Be" sung by a young African-American boy in the middle of the violent race riots and police brutality of Detroit 1960s.

If these last 2 examples are any indication (and there are many more), the talented director Julie Taymor gave some of these songs the red carpet treatment and put them in the most provocative, social and historical context.

But then suddenly there's a really sappy and unnecessary 5 minutes of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" that has no bearing on culture, history or even the plot.

The plot itself is nothing special, but set against the backdrop of the 60s and the domestic unrest over the Vietnam War, it becomes powerful. It's a simple boy-meets-girl story but with tons of quirky characters in the mix (one for every song, and I believe there are 33 songs). My gripe with the plot is that it flirts with making powerful statements about the 60s peace movement, but just when you think it's something you can sink your teeth into, it falls to an inane, predictable romcom cliché, like a misunderstanding because they don't spend enough time together, blah blah blah. (This is one of the moments of "sheer stupid".)

But then, lo and behold, the story shifts to a brilliantly satirical hospital scene with (Vietnam vet) Joe Anderson and (buxom nurse) Salma Hayek singing "Happiness Is A Warm Gun." Thus the needle tips back to "sheer brilliance".

Ultimately I enjoyed this film. It's a worthwhile ride, and the talents of the actors and filmmakers are unquestionable. I just found myself periodically irritated by cheap gimmicks to sell a song or two, and I wish those parts could have been edited out, because otherwise I would've raved about what a great film this would've been.

As it stands, my favorite Beatles remake musical remains "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" featuring the excellent music of The Bee Gees (pre-disco) as well as other fantastic musicians (Earth Wind & Fire, Alice Cooper, Peter Frampton, and who can forget the awesome finale by the 5th Beatle himself, the late great Billy Preston).

I'll say up front that this film will almost certainly go on my list of films to see before you die, only one of two that I allow from each year.

Let's get the problems out of the way first.

The overall container of this is a date movie. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back by professing love in a public venue. Its about as tired a formula as there is.

The songs are produced by T-Bone Burnett, a sort of reliable movieworld musical handyman. He's probably a nice man who once knew what it meant to have soul, but now he's a factory man. These songs are performed by the actors you see, and while admirable, it further diminishes the power compared to the originals. Also, I saw this in a multicinema, and they tend to turn the speakers down because of leakage into other spaces. So the songs here don't have the power we know they do.

Neither does the girl. In other date movies, we are supposed to fall in love a little ourselves, or at least see why she's the object at the center of everything. This actress doesn't have what it takes, and I suppose that's a result of the filmmaker being a woman and openly against objectifying women in this way. So its a bit schizo in that the form the woman chose demands something the woman won't give.

The thing gets off to a slow start. Its probably necessary for the strategy for most of the movie, which depends on growing extremes in cinematic fantasy. But you will probably go through what I did, think during the first 25-20 minutes that I had made a great mistake.

Additionally, there's some bad history in here. Its probably excusable if you consider it all just a shorthand to indicate context. But if you were there and depending on that real context to enrich your experience, you'll be a bit annoyed.

But with those shortcomings (and I'll mention some others), even in spite of them, you'll find this to be one of your deepest cinematic experiences.

Taymor isn't quite old enough to have experienced all this first hand. But she and her team do seem to have gotten the tone right. The world was turning against its inhabitants in a way completely unknown. The youth in the US responded in a way that was deeply moral and committed in a way unknown before or sadly since. This truly was the greatest generation. Think of it: we got rid of a lying scoundrel of a president, despite his best use of unconstitutional force!

Everything was up for re-examination and reinvention. Sure some of this -- most perhaps -- was stupid, opportunistic and damaging. But the imperative to re-invent wholesale was there, however colored by idealism. And this was led by the Beatles. If it hadn't been in the context of reinvention -- if religion in its old form wasn't part of what was tossed -- then surely these guys would have been the core of a new religion. One of their hangers on actually is.

What Taymor is about is a similar reinvention of cinema. She's a risk-taker. She knows her stuff, and she's willing to place it right in that sweet spot between the commercially viable and the imaginatively provocative.

Her tools are derived from Japanese and Indonesian masks, outsized intrusions and a notion of space that prefers enveloping. These three combine to create some amazing achievements in stagecraft. That's what this is all about, stagecraft and the yearning of characters to place themselves in context at the same time the filmmaker (and explicit external world forces) set context boundaries, mostly denoted by uniforms.

The first of these is the most apparent, the first time you'll see this. There are some absolutely amazing experiences in store for you just on this score. The large and small are manipulated and bent to an extreme I have only seen in small bits of Tarkovsky. She knows how and when to combine this with confinement and openness, and often when she does you'll have play with matters of scale that are unique. And its not just one device, but many, never repeated. Its as if a whole life of imagining what to do were collected in one place.

If these were songs by the Mamas and Papas, I'd still be blown away. If it were Robert Stigwood's script maybe even. But those Beatles songs....

With "Rubber Soul," the Beatles started their program to actually write songs that collectively built narratives. John and Paul were obsessed with the power of words that aggregate, and some of their projects really do have a narrative coherence similar to what we can read here, but much deeper than a date movie and a sketch of oppression. So in a way, its a weakness of what she's done to mix songs before that commitment (1966) with those done within it. It fights the DNA of what they created.

And some of the songs carry immediate narrative. "Sexy Sadie" was about the falsity of religion. Here, Sadie is a redheaded Janis Joplin gal. What?

But still, its the stagecraft, and the cosmic placing she's found. See it and have your spatial reasoning ability either broken or enhanced.

See it, and either feel bad about your life or empowered to be.

Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.

... to have been able to see this film in the beautiful Elgin Theatre with Julie Taymor there to answer questions / talk about the film afterwards (at the Toronto International Film Festival).

Wow!!!

I was carried away, I was moved to tears, I stood up and cheered.

For those who commented about the singing - the actors sang all the songs themselves. What's more, though they did record the songs in studio first as part of the rehearsal process, most of the song performances used in the film were recorded live as they played out the scenes. Perhaps that's why - for me - the songs worked so well; it actually felt like the characters were just moved to sing. Amazing performances from - mainly - unknown actors.

And I felt the story had a strong narrative line, aided / supported by the songs. It used the background of history, not just as a painted backdrop, but to add meaning and depth to the characters and the story they were living. Made me wish I'd been there (born in '65, too young to remember the 60's); I'll have to content myself with living vicariously through Jude and Lucy and the others.

Add to everything else Julie Taymor's glorious visuals, and I was truly swept away. I saw 36 films at the festival, but this was head and shoulders my favourite.

I fell in love with this film, and look forward to sharing it with friends and family who didn't have the luck to see it as I did. It's a film that will, I'm sure, reward repeated viewings.