Breakfast on Pluto

Rating: Null/10 (19 December 2009)

"Across the Universe" is a fairly unique, visually inventive film. Some initial thoughts...
1. This film attempts to encapsulate the 60s (the Vietnam war, drugs, draftees, sexual liberation, hippies and other topical issues) by splicing karaoke versions of the Beatles songs onto a fairly clichéd love story.
2. The Beatles weren't about topicality. Why use them? They were a safe band compared to many of the other musicians of the era.
3. Neil Jordan's "Breakfast on Pluto", which uses pop music to interpret Irish history, did this stuff in a much more personal manner. See also Todd Haynes's "Velvet Goldmine" and Ken Russell's "Tommy".
4. The film uses various codes of the 1960s - passion, activism, idealism, disenfranchisement and rebellion - as a kind of operatic Iraq War allegory, the hopelessness of the Vietnam War seeping into the Middle East four decades later, precisely because the psychedelic landscape of the film has been bulldozed and replaced with, not only disinterest and apathy, but (why not?) bubble gum pop.
5. The film's cast is made up to subtly resemble famous figures of the era (Hendrix, Joplin, McCartney). Other references (the Beatles' rooftop concert, Hendrix's formation of The Experience, Joplin's break up from Big Brother and the Holding Company) are far more esoteric, and will likely go over the heads of most audience members.
6. Why does a film that celebrates rebellion stick so faithfully to the standard "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl" storyline?
7. The songs are mostly flat, lacking any sort of magic. And yet.."Across the Universe" is such a visually audacious film, director Julie Taylor (exstatic at being given this budget) treating us to an orgy of zany camera work and super choreographed sequences. Almost every shot positions our eye in an interesting place, exploiting space and architecture in a variety of clever ways. The film's love story is also fairly sweet, and a bit unorthodox in the way it focuses on the beauty of the male lead (most of these romances are directed by men).
7.9/10 - Worth one viewing.