By far, the best musical in this very young century

Rating: 10/10 (13 March 2008)

After you've done with this movie, you've got to ask yourself that, how one can chose 34 from 200+ The Beatles's songs, and still create such a brilliant songs compilation and coherent motion picture. I mean, you gotta see the mess behind this production and wonder how the hell it wasn't a complete failure. "Across the Universe" is simply, by far, the best movie musical in this very young century.
As you can read my preview at here, I'm gonna skip the whole plot thing and focus on what made it so perfect. And, on the other hand, what made it so flawed in many critic's eyes.
So first thing first, what made it so flawed? Easy answer, the plot. It was mediocre at best. Story of Vietnam's war the time of 60's? Hippy? An acid trip? Psychedelic pop? Yeah sure, we've been there a thousand times before. And there are stories of second tier characters which were left unexplained (so that, movie can spend time more with the lead). We never knew what will happened with Prudence, or how Sadie and Jo-Jo got back together again.
True, those are undeniable flawed. The movie is not a masterpiece in the world of silver screen. But, hey guys, can we not look it as a movie? Can we see it as a tribute? A tribute to such an amazing era. It is a music-driven story which wrote by one of the most influential musician in our history. It represents what we love and hate. Jo-Jo represents our greatest guitarist, Jimi Hendrix. Sadie represents our greatest female rock & roll, Janis Joplin. Jude and Lucy represents young ignorance people back then. Max represents young man involuntary joined the army in the 60's, etc. I knows, I am babbling here, but what I've said is really happened, wasn't it? I don't know how difficult or pain in the arse of the director, Julie Taymor, really is. But I do know one thing that she is indeed talented filmmaker. Her visionary is really one major thing that made this trip worthwhile. A Bowling scene, Journey with Mr. Kite, Underwater ballet, enrolled army, Vietnam scene. Those are all visual & sounding inventive scenes. And it's not just she used the absolutely right song for the scene, she sometime also re-interpreted the whole meaning that songs for us. Like "I wanna whole your hand" which is a great, fun and happy song. But in the scene, Prudence sang in a ballad tone. Longing for her true love to hold her hand. I made me realized that no matter how wishful of this song is, it's heartbreaking when you can't hold somebody's hand that you desired.
I never thought that they can find a right cast in term of appearance and vocal. But they did it. Jim Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood indeed left me surprised. But what made me cheer with joy is Sadie which played by Dana Fuchs. She is simply astonishing in Janis Joplin's persona. And there's a final rooftop concert that I think is one of the great tribute to the last concert of The Beatles in 1970's.
Someone might said "Wasn't it a suicide to made the Beatles's musical set in the 60's? Haven't you seen Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?". I think they're taking risk by doing this movie. I'm glad that did it and, by that, did it REAL worth trying for.