The Beatles. Just thinking about having to review anything they’ve so much as glanced at sends chills down my spine. Writing reviews means being able to take your deepest held beliefs about something and turning them into words that mean, roughly, what you feel.
To write what I feel about The Beatles, besides all-consuming love, is an impossibility, or at the very least, a plateau which I have not yet reached. That being said, this movie is stellar, and here’s why.
Across The Universe stars Jim Sturgess as Jude, a British blue collar who illegally immigrates to America on a mission of discovery and general early-adulthood confusion. He meets Max, a party-hardy collegiate played by Joe Anderson, and Max’s sister Lucy, played by Raleigh-local Evan Rachel Wood.
Set in the 1960s, with all the political and social turmoil that goes with it, the three journey to New York City to escape personal demons.
They end up finding a purpose in the ever-changing world — one the Vietnam War is threatening to tear apart.
What ensues is a psychedelic, psychotropic, psychotomimetic journey fueled by music of the infamous Fab Four, told through various actors as a musical over the course of the film.
You’ll witness steel-chinned military draft inspectors poking and prodding Max to the tune of “I Want You;” a lesbian cheerleader calling out “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to a fellow pompomer; painter Jude experimenting with nails and fruit to the sound of “Strawberry Fields Forever;” and a somber Lucy calling out “Blackbird” across a New York harbor.
With a little help from Hollywood friends, you’re treated to cameos of Eddie Izzard as Mr. Kite, Joe Cocker as a pimp in “Come Together,” Salma Hayek as a one of a quintet of voluptuous nurses and Bono declaring “I Am The Walrus” on a magical mystery tour bus.
While the central cast is largely composed of unknown actors, their performances in and out of song is mesmerizing, and it’s clear director Julie Taymor knew what she was doing.
And these qualities result in spite of recent controversy surrounding the film being shortened by 20 minutes — though I feel that, regardless of content, audiences would have had trouble with a 150-minute film.
The songs aren’t meant to be in the same tonality as The Beatles themselves, but are instead a passionate outcry that’s more likely to be found on a theater stage than a silver screen. The movie truly is a meeting of the minds of film and stage, and its visual aspect is easily one of the best parts.
Underwater sex scenes, walls painted in moving clouds, vibrant “I Want You” posters reaching out to grab the viewer and a coordinated dance sequence in a bowling alley — it’s all here.
The music is the film’s biggest success and, simultaneously, its main problem. I never thought The Beatles’ music could be realized in any other medium, but here it’s fitting and absorbing.
However, the frequency to which these songs are used cuts into the story. There are 32 — count ’em, 32 songs — by The Beatles, which means normal conversation between characters can get interrupted by five consecutive songs strung together. And it wears you out.
If they had wanted the movie to be told entirely through song, then do so. But there are so many moments of normality in there that when it disappears in song for half an hour, you begin to miss it. That’s not to say the story isn’t moved along at a brisk pace during the musical numbers, but we understand these characters in terms of both song and speech, and thus need a careful rationing of both.
With that in mind, the film accomplishes one thing in particular that makes me exceedingly pleased.
One of the reasons The Beatles is one of the, if not the, greatest band to have ever turned on a mic is how much its music varied and changed in a scant eight years of playing. The depth to which it experimented with varieties of instrumentation, content of lyrics and general there-are-no-rules rock has never been anywhere near replicated or reflected in bands since, and this film, from blatant optimism to violent depression, manages to show that very same range and talent.
If I have any other complaint, it’s that the resolution was a bit too easy, but perhaps I was simply pining for “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” to show up in the closing scene and not in the credits, where it simply doesn’t belong.
Across the Universe is one of the seminal film experiences of 2007, and everyone should stop what they’re doing right now and go see it. Come on, out of the chair, into the car. That’s right.
