‘ACROSS THE UNIVERSE’
I’ve been trying to articulate just how I feel about Julie Taymor’s Beatles-based musical “Across the Universe” (Sony, 4 stars). My first feeling after watching the movie was: “If I’d known there would be a Julie Taymor, I would have pursued a career in movies just so I could one day work with her.
But that’s foolish. I’m too old to switch careers now.
So I’ve got to go with the title of a discussion thread for the movie on the Web site Internet Movie Database (imdb.com): “I would pay money to be an extra in a Taymor sequel.”
That about sums it up.
Almost.
A few forum threads down the list is this one: “Possibility of ‘Across the Universe 2,’ says Taymor.” (The director told E!’s Mark Malkin, “I only used, like, 33 (Beatles) songs. I think there’s about 200, so there’s so much more I can do and work with.”)
So, yeah, I’m going to start saving my money.
Taymor is a director with an infinitely fabulous imagination who seems to naturally attract devoted and creative people. “Across the Universe” is just a mind-blowingly beautiful movie.
Never mind that I grew up with the Beatles and even recognized some of the papier-mache figures in the anti-war marches (or their distant uncles), “Universe” is a robustly entertaining movie with a powerful story inspired by one of the most fab periods in our cultural history: the 1960s.
Taymor stitched together 33 well-known Beatles tunes beneath the story of a Liverpool ship welder named Jude (unknown Jim Sturgess, a scruffy Paul McCartney look-alike) who travels to the United States to find the ex-GI father he never knew. Jude melds into a classic ’60s “family” that includes college dropout Max (Joe Anderson), fiery blues-rocker Sadie (Dana Fuchs), Jimi Hendrix-like guitarist Jojo (Martin Luther) and runaway waif Prudence (T.V. Carpio).
Jude’s heart, and ours, eventually tumbles for Max’s younger sister, Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood).
New York City in the 1960s was a heady time of endless possibilities, passion and joyously impoverished communal living with the ever-present specter of the Vietnam War. Psychedelia and Army green, side by side.
They run into a counterculture Ken Kesey-like character named Dr. Robert (Bono) who takes them on his hippie bus for a magical mystery tour to the estate of his East Coast counterpart (Timothy Leary, no doubt). They end up at a trippy circus in a field as the guests of the maestro named, naturally, Mr. Kite (Eddie Izzard).
In the midst of all this, college dropout Max is drafted and sent off to Vietnam from which he comes back a bit of a mess. Yeah, there’s a bit of the musical “Hair” in all this, too.
“Across the Universe” is more than a brightly played museum piece. The music, for one, may be Beatles songbook but the arraignments and voices are stunningly fresh. In most instances, music producer Elliot Goldenthal stripped the songs down to minimal essence before turning them over to the young cast, some of whom never sang before.
The result is fresh, alive – Beatles music as you’ve never heard it before.
Bono and Izzard are only two cameos to watch for. Salma Hayek, plays a nurse (well, six nurses) in the military hospital ward where Max recuperates. Joe Cocker, a venerable interpreter of Beatles songs, is seen singing in three cameos.
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