What I walked away with was a swirling blend of images and music and a sense that I've just re-experienced the Sixties.
Tools:
Send to a friend »
"Across the Universe" is a surprising and ambitious musical. Make that audacious. What else could you call a project that seeks to tell a trans-Atlantic love story set against the background of the turbulent Sixties, using nothing but Beatles songs--even naming characters, planting allusions, and drawing plot inspiration from the Fab Four's songbook? And that's roughly 200 songs, we learn on the commentary track, with 34 of them (by my count) actually making it onto the soundtrack.
Sure there's a little "Magical Mystery Tour" or "Yellow Submarine" madness, but in terms of its style and structure, "Across the Universe" also owes a large debt to MTV and Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge!" Visually, this film by Julie Taymor--who directed "The Lion King" on Broadway and the film "Frida"--has an overcaffeinated feel, moving quickly from image to image and sequence to sequence, with the songs pulling the plot along. Like "Moulin Rouge!" (2001), it begins with a young man singing about love, and there are times when newcomer Jim Sturgess even reminds you a bit of Ewan McGregor. His voice, a pure-sounding mellow baritone that seems equally comfortable in the higher registers, is also the most like The Beatles. When Sturgess sings "Girl," "All My Loving," "I've Just Seen a Face," "Something," "Revolution," and the title song, it's the film's closest connection to the original music, and even then it's quite different.
To Taymor's credit, she brought music producer and composer Elliot Goldenthal onboard, and he made the decision not to remain faithful to the original songs, but to reinterpret them for a new generation that wasn't even born when Lennon and McCartney were writing their music. I was 14 when the British Invasion hit the U.S., and I still have my original "Meet the Beatles" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band" albums. I grew up listening to their music, and I have to say that Goldenthal's arrangements, with the exception of a song or two, are positively inspired. In many cases (I know this is heresy), they're even much better than the originals. Partly that's because the interpretations often add another dimension. "Strawberry Fields Forever," for example, was originally a psychedelic song about a drug "trip" that made reference to a Salvation Army Children's Home near where John Lennon grew up. But with strawberries as bombs in this psychedelic rendition, it becomes an anti-war anthem. And "I Want to Hold Your Hand," sung by a young female high school student in Ohio as she watches a cheerleader she has a secret same-sex crush on, becomes a more sensuous confessional than the peppy teen angst of the original.
Clever re-imaginings of the Beatles' songs abound. And, of course, it's not unclever to have all of the characters named for Beatles songs while also suggesting Sixties' icons. There's Jude (Sturgess) from "Hey Jude," Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) from "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," Max (Joe Anderson) from "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," Prudence (T.V. Carpio) from "Dear Prudence," JoJo (Martin Luther) from "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," and Sadie (Dana Fuchs) from "Sexy Sadie." Stylistically, there's no mistaking Sadie's belting out of "Helter Skelter," "Why Don't We Do It in the Road," and "Don't Let Me Down" for anyone else but Janis Joplin. JoJo, likewise, with his soulful electric guitar playing on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is an obvious allusion to Jimi Hendrix. In this way, the screenplay by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais ("The Commitments") adds layer upon layer of Sixties images, so that the film itself begins to take on the pop-culture vitality of an Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein painting.
Like "Rent," this is really an ensemble musical, and all of the young actors bring an honest energy and integrity to their roles and songs. You know you're in for something special when an early sequence shows a prom where a girl (Wood) dancing with her beau sings "Hold Me Tight" while the band onstage does the backup, and then a quick cut takes us to Liverpool and the very Cavern Club where The Beatles played in the early days, with Sturgess singing the same song--each character moved by a soon-to-be loss of someone special in their lives. We're told on the commentary track that 80 percent of the songs are sung live, not lip-synched, and that organic flow and honesty really comes across.
Burgess plays a shipyard welder who wants to get away to America to a different life, while Wood, who sings solos on "It Won't Be Long," "If I Fell," and "Blackbird," plays a college-bound young woman from a slightly higher class. Eventually they find each other, but the Decade of Change intrudes on their lives in a big way. Lucy's boyfriend is killed in Vietnam in the opening sequence, and her brother, Max, ends up having to serve overseas. At home, meanwhile, the "players" come together right now over social issues, confronting police and engaging in their own version of the Ken Kesey magic bus trip, under the hippie tutelage of Dr. Robert (Bono), who sings "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." Bono isn't the only celeb onboard. Joe Cocker is particularly wonderful in three small roles and singing "Come Together" with Martin Luther, Jeff Beck performs "A Day in the Life," and Eddie Izzard sings "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite."
Average user rating (1-5):