Seeing ‘Across the Universe’
By Elizabeth Gartley
I watched Julie Taymor’s surreal musical, “Across the Universe” last week. An IMDb user described the movie as “Hair” meets “Moulin Rouge”, which is a pretty accurate definition. “Across the Universe” is a musical which uses only Beatles songs to tell a love story in 1960s New York – with some Vietnam War/pseudo-political stuff and Janis Joplin-y and Jimi Hendrix-y characters mixed in there too.
Taymor’s work has a history of being very visual and theatrical; she directed “Frida”, based on the life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, and also directed and designed costumes for the stage version of “The Lion King”. Taymor’s work is unique because she’s a theatre director who revels in the technological freedoms of film – theatre, of course, is a medium that loves symbolism and the surreal. And honestly, I really need to see more of her work. But initially I had pretty high hopes for “Across the Universe”, but then I heard that Taymor had difficulties when dealing with the studio, and actually threatened to remove her name from the film altogether.
She didn’t though, so I guess they came to some sort of consensus. But I still felt like I could feel the studio’s hand – some of the story felt contrived, and several musical numbers seemed to be just thrown in for no reason. And of course, all the characters are named for Beatles songs too (Jude, Max, Lucy, Prudence, Sophie …). The movie still wasn’t bad, but I’d love to see a Taymor director’s cut, if such a thing exists.
The best moments in “Across the Universe” were definitely the really theatrical ones, with strange stage make-up, choreographed dancing, even weird props and puppets: namely, “She’s So Heavy,” “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” and “Happiness is a Warm Gun” (the film even got that the “warm gun” was a metaphor), these were definitely the most surreal songs.
The weirdest parts were my favorite, but in a round-about way, those made the most sense. I mean, if you’re going to make a musical movie with Beatles songs that takes place in 1960s New York City, it should be really twisted and dream-like, right?
“Across the Universe” is available on DVD.
Elizabeth “Liz” Gartley, of Houlton, has a BA in media studies from Emerson College in Boston. She has studied abroad in the Netherlands and Australia, and most recently interned at a production company in Hollywood. She can be reached online at egartley@gmail.com.
