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Opening Friday: Across The Universe
It won’t be long before Across the Universe comes out in local theaters - Friday, to be exact - and as I mentioned last week, it is a glorious mess.
This Beatle covers musical has taken a pummeling from many critics, who deride it for being slight, cliched, pretentious and just plain silly. And you know what? Sometimes it is, but I feel fine about that. Watching this movie is like listening to the Beatles’ White Album.
Some people, including producer George Martin, have long believed the White Album would have been much better had it been pared down to one disc. And they have a point. While there are indisputably great songs like “Happiness is a Warm Gun” and “Blackbird,” no rational person would claim that goofs like “Wild Honey Pie” and throwaways like “Cry Baby Cry” are among the Beatles’ greatest songs. Yet it’s impossible to imagine the White Album without any of them. Part of the reason it’s memorable is because it’s so sprawling and messy.
The same goes for this film. Across the Universe may not be perfect, but I’m so tired of all the attempts to equate this movie with Beatle-cover disasters like 1978s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees. Quite frankly, the comparison is stupid - and wrong. Julie Taymor’s film is simply too bold and ambitious to be painted with that brush.
Admittedly, the plot is rather thin. Jude (Jim Sturgess), a dockworker from Liverpool, sails across the water to America where he meets the beguiling Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) and her devil-may-care brother Max (Joe Anderson). The three become steeped in the revolution of the 60s, with Vietnam, psychedelics and radicalism all coming into play, complete with characters that are Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix sound-alikes.
Yes, naming the characters after Beatles songs is a little cutesy, and at times Across the Universe plays like one of those cheesy TV shows set in the 60s with everyone wearing cheap-looking tie-dyed shirts and looking like they’re about to say “far out.” But those shows were ordinary and dull. Those adjectives don’t apply to the work of the woman who made Titus, Frida and the Broadway version of The Lion King.
Taymor’s wild visual imagination, brilliantly aided by the lush photography of Amelie/A Very Long Engagement lenser Bruno Delbonnel, creates several striking sequences. “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” a long, intense love song on Abbey Road, transforms into a military recruiting tune, with the “I want you” Uncle Sam posters coming to life. “Because” becomes the backdrop to a lavish sequence, with the characters singing underwater.
The covers of the songs are mostly imaginative too. Some, like the title tune, are relatively straightforward, but others seem new. “With a Little Help From My Friends” is a clever fusion of the Beatle and Joe Cocker versions. Most remarkably of all, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is slowed down so that it’s no longer an ecstatic love song in which the singer wants to hold something other than her hand, but a wistful ballad about the hand you can’t hold - and the scene is set in Dayton, Ohio, of all places.
Sturgess and Wood are very charming together, and both have strong singing voices. Sturgess pulls off the differing vocal styles of Lennon and McCartney with equal aplomb, delivering strong takes on “Girl” and “I’ve Just Seen a Face.” Wood’s lovely soprano soars on both uptempo numbers like “Hold Me Tight” and ballads like “If I Fell.”
Granted, not every number works, but even the misfires have something to redeem them. One sequence has Eddie Izzard talk-singing his way through “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” accompanied by giant figures that look like the unholy children of the Blue Meanies and the Apple Bonkers from Yellow Submarine. It’s all too much, but with Taymor staging it as a circus/puppet show, I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
I would much rather see a filmmaker try for something original and miss, than stick with the obvious and succeed. So even when Across the Universe fails, it’s winning. And when it succeeds, it’s mind-blowing. I love this film no matter what anyone says, and
Nothing’s gonna change my mind
Nothing’s gonna change my mind
Nothing’s gonna change my mind
Nothing’s gonna change my mind.
GRADE: A
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Reviews
Comments
By leslie wolf
October 12, 2007 10:20 PM | Link to this
i saw the first show this morning in tulsa oklahoma and loved this movie. i immediately went and purchased the soundtrack and encouraged others to see. this will undoubtedly become a cult classic. i cannot wait to see it again.