There’s a great deal of the directing that harkens back to the Beatles’ own films. I’d watched the “Hey, Jude” scene on Taymor’s MySpace page maybe a month and a half back, but that couldn’t prepare me for how it actually unfolded on screen. Taymor handles the camera with an artiste’s flair, and the scene staging is usually quite inventive and bright. It’s the second act where the more imaginative imagery overwhelms the story. Play it loud enough, keeps the demons at bay.” - was.) The first act of the film worked, the third act worked as well. Fortunately, the line I really liked - “Music’s the only thing that makes sense anymore. As it is, a piece of dialogue I liked from the trailer - “Is she a part of your life?” “Lord, I hope so” - isn’t in the film. (Except they both feature pretty prominently in the trailer attached to Spider-Man 3 earlier in the year. Seriously, the film would have lost absolutely nothing if the Bono/Izzard sequences were gone. Maybe that was the major cut Joe Roth of Revolution Studios wanted - cut the middle. And when the film regains its footing, the emotional hold is gone. It’s as if the film is daring the viewer to like it, but it holds the viewer at bay. The momentum the film had built dissipates. Yes, it’s visually stunning, but it’s also emotionally off-putting. Kite throws a carnival - and it doesn’t make any sort of sense. The film segues into some truly random imagery - first, Bono’s Doctor Robert enters the picture then, Eddie Izzard’s Mr.
The problem I had with the film? It loses its emotional hold over the audience at about the halfway point. If you’ve seen the film, if you know the lyrics, you can probably figure out precisely the moment where it would have worked. There was one spot where I hoped they’d have broken out into “Two of Us,” one of my favorite Beatles songs, and something of an underappreciated gem. “Let It Be” is utterly haunting, especially for the juxtaposition of the two funerals. I loved the way “I’ve Just Seen a Face” was handled. The music works, and most of the songs are staged incredibly well. Across the Universe actually gets “Revolution” - that song has been so layered with meanings that John Lennon never intended, in part because of his own activities in the 1970s, but the song itself speaks to the pointlessness of revolution. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” becomes a song about unrequitted love - an amazing, and sadly true, reading of a song that I’d usually taken for a song about that first flush of infatuation. The songs used make sense this isn’t just people singing Beatles songs to fill the time. It’s a mess that works in places, doesn’t work in others, and then starts working again.Īs an attempt to make a musical told using Beatles songs, Across the Universe succeeds.
#Across the universe song movie#
I think the phrase I used was, “I need to see this movie the same way I need oxygen.” With a viewpoint like that, one’s set up for disappointment, no?Īcross the Universe isn’t a failure. I’ve spoken in the past of my need to see this film. Seen today - Julie Taymor’s Beatles-themed musical, Across the Universe.
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