If you’ve ever heard the song “Across the Universe” (and if you haven’t, please find an appropriate time to do so), you’ll know that it’s one of those Beatles tunes that doesn’t quite make any coherent sense: it is a song built on abstract images that blend and dissolve into each other, and yet these images and the soft, hypnotic melody take you on a fantastic, warped journey through time, space, and John Lennon’s mind.
Julie Taymor’s film “Across the Universe” may very well be attempting to parallel the song by fulfilling this description in film form. Her brainchild is essentially a series of dazzling images, sometimes crossing into the realm of the psychedelic, tied together by revamped versions of songs by The Beatles that trace the atmospheric trajectory of the ’60s.
This isn’t to say that “Across the Universe” has no plot. It’s just that the plot is less important than the sensation created by the songs and landscapes that carry the film. In fact, the story is very driven by what those four lads from Liverpool had to say in their music, right down to the film’s characters, who are all named after individuals mentioned in The Beatles’ songs.
Jude (Jim Sturgess), a dockworker who hails from (where else?) Liverpool, England, shows up at Princeton University one day in hopes of connecting with a father he has never met. Instead, he bonds with a student at the university named Max (Joe Anderson), who takes Jude home with him for Thanksgiving, where he meets Max’s sheltered but lovely younger sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood).
Max drops out of school, and the three of them migrate to New York City, where they rent an apartment from a very attractive singer named Sadie (get it?) that is also shared by a guitarist, JoJo, and a runaway, Prudence. Jude and Lucy fall in love, and the six of them lose themselves in the New York of the ’60s: the music, the freedom, the drugs and eventually the Vietnam War. Max is drafted into the army, and Lucy joins the radical movement against the war. Jude, however, abstains from anything involving the conflict and instead becomes obsessed with creating art. As Lucy engages more and more in political protest, she grows frustrated with Jude’s apathy toward the war, and their diverging views begin to tear them apart: a nice microcosm of the glaring tensions and divisions in the U.S. over Vietnam.
What is most impressive about this film is Taymor’s ability to construct a story line from the music of The Beatles that flows so smoothly that it seems as if the mop-tops had written these songs for this express purpose. There are some momentous, earth-shattering scenes that truly capture the chaotic and revolutionary essence of that decade. While tripping on some sort of hallucinogen, the characters experience a screwball vision of “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” performed by Eddie Izzard as the madcap ringmaster of a cartoon circus. In one of the most moving scenes in the film, a violent protest held at Columbia University is juxtaposed with the carnage Max encounters while fighting in Vietnam, all of which is underscored by a powerful fusion of “Helter Skelter” and “Across the Universe.”
The acting and singing are strong across the board, especially from Mr. Sturgess, who strongly resembles a young Paul McCartney. This is not a film that everyone will enjoy, especially if you are not already a fan of The Beatles and intensely artistic filmmaking, but it is a wildly incredible piece of art. It acts as superb tribute to the fab four and one of the most formative time periods in U.S. history. In the end, you might just end up believing that within our unruly, disordered world, all you need is love.
