Far out, man. Across the Universe is a hippy-trippy film musical constructed entirely around and inside the soul of 33 songs by The Beatles.
The songs range from the early hits All My Loving and I Want to Hold Your Hand to politicized tunes such as Helter Skelter and Revolution. We get the psychedelic era with Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds and I Am the Walrus, then mature romantic classics such as Something and All You Need is Love.
They are freshly sung by the cast members, including leads Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess and Joe Anderson, all of whom are good (not great) at the warbling. But all are excellent in the blend of singing and acting, so the story moves and you suspend disbelief. Their interpersonal chemistry is compelling. The core ensemble works.
Because the songs infuse the spoken dialogue with phrases, as well as storyline ideas, and set up every one of the musical set pieces, The Beatles drive the film (which made its debut as a Gala in the Toronto film festival).
At the same time, because the songs are placed in a fresh new context, they are invigorated and widened, deepened in meaning, without taking anything away from the originals. This is a marvellous sleight of hand, just the kind of trick you might expect on a magical mystery tour.
The film was directed by dazzling visual stylist Julie Taymor (The Lion King on Broadway; Titus and Frida on the silver screen). As a result, Across the Universe is often spectacular to experience, like swimming in a rainbow on an acid flashback.
Watching some sequences is as close to an actual drug experience as clean living can offer. And approximating that seems appropriate in a movie which poetically chronicles the rise of the counter-culture movement of the 1960s.
In one of the oddities of the film, which Taymor co-wrote with Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, The Beatles themselves are never mentioned, although they are omnipresent.
Neither are other pop culture icons cited, although there is a Janis Joplinesque character (played with lusty verve by Dana Fuchs), a guitarist who channels Hendrix (Martin Luther McCoy) and a cult leader who invokes the bohemian spirit of Neal Cassady (Bono).
The key players get names plucked from songs, although often in a new context. Hence we have Jude (Sturgess), the artistic lad from Liverpool; Lucy (Wood), a firebrand American anti-war activist; Max (Anderson), Lucy's brother; and Sadie (Fuchs), the singer.
Plus, in a poignant sequence, there is Prudence (T.V. Carpio), who is now an Ohio cheerleader. She represses her lesbianism but sings I Want to Hold Your Hand, her version of lusting after another cheerleader.
These juxtapositions occur throughout the film, with Beatles' lyrics suddenly given new dimension by the story being told while they are sung. That is a wonderful new discovery.
Less appealing are some of the grandiose set pieces. Eddie Izzard's Mr. Kite fantasy plays like leftover Fellini footage from the 1960s. It needed to be even more fantastical.
Bono's scenes, including I Am the Walrus, did not thrill me. Yet Joe Cocker's multiple-character cameo on Come Together was cool. Salma Hayek also pops up as five singing nurses, falling somewhere between Bono's failure and Cocker's success.
So the film is inconsistent, even on its own terms. In addition, you sense that Taymor was pushing too hard to make Across the Universe live up to its title. Her agitprop socio-political commentary on the 1960s, and its connection to the 2000s, seems forced, not fresh.
Ultimately, too, the film is also just a sentimental love story between Wood and Sturgess. While the story makes us believe, simply, that all you need is love, that may be too soft a core to vault Across the Universe into the league of classic musicals. Even with the spirit of The Beatles on screen.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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