A Vision to Behold

As I was watching Julie Taymor's visionary Beatles musical "Across the Universe" something came over me that lays dormant many times when I go to the movies, I was moved in a way very few films have done in the past few years. While I was watching the film all the images and music came together that overcame me and opened up my hopeful, optimistic, youthful sensibilities in full force. This is a hippy film, it's meant to bring about ideas of love, youth, revolution, and peace, and I loved this movie for that, I loved it so much that I was able to forgive its short comings.

"Across the Universe" is a fairly routine plot about youthful intellects and artists who all come together in New York and live in one of those big studio apartments run by a to good to be true lady landlord who is also a nightclub singer.

The main character of the film is a named Jude a kid from working class Liverpool who comes to America in search of his real father who abandoned him and his mother. After he finds his father he meets Max, a bit of a slacker who goes to university but doesn't take his studies seriously. Max invites Jude to thanksgiving where he meets Lucy, Max's' sister. When the action moves to New York Jude and Lucy fall in love, Max is recruited to Vietnam, the sexy landlady Sadie falls for her guitarist boyfriend Jo Jo and Prudence a young love sick lesbian comes through the bathroom window and won't come out to play.

Ok so let's not pretend these people are real, I found these characters are mostly representations of either young love, rebellion, unrequited love, passion or anything else along those lines. Sometimes it seemed like the situations are staged just to be able to get into a song, but I soon forgot all about that when the songs began to play, I was soon transported into a unique, bizarre, magical world that only the spirit of the 60s and the music of the Beatles could inspire.

Taymor herself seems to have been inspired by not only The Beatles and the 60s but also New York as a vibrant creative place. I was kinda reminded of "RENT" in a way watching these young idealists trying to survive in New York as the world is changing around them. The difference between the two was the era. "Across the Universe" takes place in the sixties during political strife, assassinations, and Vietnam. Taymor makes some bold choices in representing what this time was like to live in.

In probably my favorite sequence, we see Max going to the Vietnam recruitment office where we see the poster of Uncle Sam singing "I want you". Suddenly Max is sent through an assembly line and put in with all the other young recruits. The Army men all look like living dolls doing a very unsettling marching choreography. It's all very weird and wonderful to see.

There is another scene involving Max in a hospital bed, he has become addicted to drugs and needs his fix "Happiness is a Warm Gun"begins to play and suddenly we see in a very creative way the hospital becoming what Max is seeing and what he is feeling.

The film goes back and forth from very high concept ideas like the ones I just described to more simpler love songs such as Lucy singing "If I Fell" as she is becoming more and more in love with Jude or Prudence singing a rather bitter sweet rendition of "I wanna Hold your hand" as she's picturing a girl she has a crush with.

It's these interpretations of Beatles songs that I found interesting and suddenly when the lyrics are put the context of the film they have a deeper meaning. When Lucy, a girl who lost her first boyfriend in Vietnam sings "...Cause I've been in love before and I found that love was more than just holding hands" I felt more connected with the song than I have before.

I can understand people's negative opinion of this film, it is definitely one that will polarize an audience, but I can't speak for those who have mixed feelings about it, I dived into "Across the Universe" and it held on to me with its boldness, its charm, and its spirit. I hope when people go to it they'll be able to see what I see.

4 stars out of 4