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"…Is Anyone
Going To Listen To My Story…"
Messing
with an icon like The Beatles song catalogue is like doing a whoopsie on the
Crown Jewels – probably not a smart move – but fun and imaginative nonetheless.
And that's why I love the inventive and brave "Across The Universe" - a film
that seems to elicit derision and ecstasy in equal measures. The spirit of The
Beatles as a group and as individuals was always to move forward – experiment –
expand your horizons – and this 2007 movie is extraordinary for doing just that
in such a fresh and challenging way.
Director
Julie Taymor and Music Production Supervisor Elliot Goldenthal take 33 Lennon
and McCartney classics and along with legendary British TV writers Ian Le Frenais
and Dick Clement weave them into a story about a poor Liverpudlian dock-worker/artist
(Jim Sturgess playing Jude) seeking his absent wartime American father in the
USA. There he meets the handsome, well-healed and slightly crazy Max (Joe
Anderson) and his preppy American sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Woods) who is
waiting for her boyfriend to return from a war far, far away. And on their
story goes as the two culturally different types passionately fall in love with
each other (much like the USA did with The Beatles and Britain).
The movie
is not surprisingly set during the height of the Sixties American Protest
movement - Corporate greed, Vietnam and the Draft, racial inequality, freedom
from the straight-jackets of parents and old ways are all grist for the “All
You Need Is Love” theme that permeates throughout. And it gels more times than
it doesn’t because a huge amount of work and imagination went into the making
of this movie – choreography, locations, the lyrics craftily woven into the
narrative… But most of all it’s the radical restructuring of The Beatles songs
that impresses most (and who sings them and how).
The boys
get drunk and lark about on the lawns of Princeton University to "With A Little
Help From My Friends", a black child sings an Acapella "Let It Be" by a burnt-out
car wreck as rioting goes on in the city streets all around him which then
segues into a choir crying as they sing the hymnal song at his funeral – a
black guitarist called JoJo (Hendrix) arrives in New York off the bus and is
greeted by Joe Cocker dressed as a subway bum/pimp doing "Come Together" while
U2's Bono turns up as an acid-totting preacher singing "I Am The Walrus" as he
exits a psychedelic bus. Jude befriends the reckless Max (brother of Lucy) and
they both thumb-it to the Village Scene of New York where Sexy Sadie is their
landlady (a great turn by singer Joan Osborne). The Polynesian Prudence (who is
a lesbian) literally comes in through her bathroom window while Max later has to
enlist in the army to a truly menacing rendition of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" where the draft poster literally comes alive. These are just some of the inspired
moments - but there are so many more. Better still however is both Evan Rachel
Woods and Jim Sturgess producing aching vocals on radically slowed down mop-top
tunes like "Girl" and "If I Fell" that suddenly feel tender in a way they never
did before.
It helps
that English actor Jim Sturgess is a dead ringer for Macca and has a great accent
and voice – but the problems arise when too many of the set scenes feel a bit
forced no matter how inventive the visuals.
The Blu Ray
picture is defaulted to 2:40.1 (lines top and bottom) but even stretched to 16
x 9 full screen still looks ravishing. There’s 5.1 True HD audio and Subtitles are
in Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, English for the hard of hearing,
English, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Polish, Romanian, Slovene and Turkish. The
extras are impressive too:
1. Extended
Musical Performances
2. Deleted
Scene
3. Commentary
with Director Julie Taymor and Music Production Composer Elliot Goldenthal
4. Five Behind The Scenes Featurettes and More
5. Don
Mace Art Gallery Featuring Drawings From The Film
As you can imagine there will be thespians and
scholars with their noses right out of joint over "Across The Universe" – I say
knob to that. I loved it. Fresh, original and yet warm and deeply respectful to
music and people who have literally weaved their way into our DNA - this is a
movie and subject matter you mustn’t get precious about. Taymor and Co. went
for it and I’m sure John Lennon would be smiling right now at the fact that
they did so with such panache and balls…
And in the
end – and in the words of the brillo Fabs - isn’t love all that you need…
