Across the Universe

[Robert.]

The director of Across the Universe, Julie Taymor, is well-known for her acclaimed stage adaptation of Disney’s The Lion King. Here she takes the Beatles’ music the broad way: not only is greatest music in pop culture history given the showtunes treatment, in which dialogue and trading voices play over new instrumental arrangements for the benefit of a banal story, but the music and lyrics are drained of the irony, ambiguity, and nuance that made them so intelligently hip. The musical set pieces range from the decent to the cringe inducing, but none of them offer any new insights- there are some strong images but none that were especially useful to connect with the music, while most of numbers reduce to unsubtle and bathetic dramatic monologues. Beatles’ fans will vary on how forgiving they are with the film’s liberties, but I was restless to leave the theatre and go listen to the originals.
Of course there is no story inherent in the Beatles music. This doesn’t make a good musical film impossible (there have already been three), but this film’s approach is unwise. Taymor tries to contort the songs into something that characters in a plotted musical would believably say (all the characters are helpfully named after Beatles’ songs; thus “Dear Prudence”- an interesting and rather creepy song on the White Album- can actually be sung to a sulking Prudence). This does two things- 1) as mentioned, it cheapens the lyrics 2) it makes for an incredibly boring story. There is absolutely nothing new or interesting about this film’s few plots, which fit perfectly into either the 60’s movie or the musical stereotypes. They are: A) boy comes to America in search of lost father, falls in love with girl, has fall out with girl, is deported, comes back later because all-you-need-is-love. B) boy drops out of ivy league (ok, his name is Max, and he comes the closest to being a compelling human), goes to New York, becomes hippy, is drafted, goes to Army, becomes fucked up. C) WASP girl becomes radical, boyfriend becomes jealous of radical chief, and so on. D) Rock singer starts career starts to rise, has to make a choice between her career/slimy record company and the band’s guitarist that helped her start to make it. These characters are singing cardboard, instruments for music that doesn’t need this context.
The singer sounds like Janis Joplin and the guitarist dresses and plays like Jimi Hendrix. The film is replete with irrelevant 60’s references: Kerouac, the MLK assassination, Timothy Leary. Taymor is indulging in pop cultural mythologizing, which is fine and probably the best approach, but her vision isn’t strong enough to distract from the weakness of her characters and the unoriginality of the story. This movie switches into Rote Sixites Mode and doesn’t pinpoint what was unique about the Beatles and their message. Forrest Gump, for instance, goes through all the obligatory 60’s tropes, but in interesting ways that serve the characters and doesn’t just say “Hey, those times were interesting, here’s a reminder.” Despite the pseudo-surreal psychedelic trips, there is a point when everyone in the audience has figured out where this film is going, knows there will be no surprises, and is just waiting. The film also becomes blunt and sanctimonious in its politics. John Lennon would agree with these characters, just as, say, all those people mentioned in “La Vie Boheme” might agree in general principle with the Rent folk. But Lennon and Palbo Neruda had brains and talent.
One would hope for more surprises, but of course no one is going to Across the Universe for the story. Not all of the musical scenes are horrible, but none are as good as the originals. In general, the numbers are slowed down, the syllables are dragged out, and the voices are sopped up, sacrificing the sprightly pace that even the Beatles’ love songs had. I love gospel music, but please, not for “Let it Be,” which is moving because its simple and doesn’t strain for effect. The meanings, usually cryptic and playful in the later Beatles, are distorted. For instance, Abbey Road’s “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is sung by Uncle Sam to the newly drafted Max- makes sense, right?- in a scene with some nice visuals but overly broadway-ish choreography (hey, we all have our prejudices). When the line “She’s so Heavy” finds the infantry hauling the Stature of Liberty over the war-torn terrain of Vietnam, I couldn’t prevent myself from slamming my head against the hard plastic seat in front of me. To be fair, no suitable context could be found for “Happiness is a Warm Gun” or “Come Together,” but that doesn’t make it right to try. The Beatles’ probably had no idea what they were saying either, but at least with them it sounded appropriate. However, the song that wins for worst, though I appreciated the audacity, is Eddie Izzard’s pointless rendition of “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” in a scene inspired by Moulin Rouge.
This review has been mostly negative because I’ve started from the height of the Beatles’ music and worked my way down. There are of course great songs and a few nifty special effects and visual fireworks. I think the people who will enjoy this movie the most are the causal fans who haven’t memorized all the songs and won’t be incensed by the blasphemy. Still, there’s no getting away from the flaws, and there’s the temptation to descry anything that uses the Beatles’ music in an imperfect way as cynical capitalism.

[Robert.]

oh, i wrote this on word and never looked at it- came back to prepare for the screen talk. There are two invisible paragraph breaks, can you spot them?