Julie Taymor's musical or modern Beatles music videos

Rating: 6/10 (15 November 2007)

Julie Taymor intrigued me with her visceral adaption of Shakespeare's Titus (1999), dazzled me by putting Frida's canvasses to life over Salma Hayek's brilliant performance in Frida (2002), and I was hoping that her keen visual style would make this musical magical. I was hoping for Moulin Rouge! (2001); I was hoping too much.
Tying this to Frida, the beautiful Hayek is back (without the unibrow) for a visual feast of a cameo in a well choreographed and edited scene. In fact, as whole, the visual aspects works very well and even if Rodrigo Prieto (one of the best cinematographers of the decade) went on to do bigger and better things after Frida, Bruno Delbonnel, which did Le fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain (2001), is a well-abled replacement. The compositions are artsy, refined, innovative and give life to the movie more than the music or the story. Unfortunately, the main problem of the movie is that beyond that visual prowess, the movie is disjointed and often feels more like a collection of successive music videos-- a sort of more refined typical Bollywood musical. The story is lacking and the adventure is not propelled in the way that say a "Big Fish (2003) was able to while remaining far-out and visually over-the-top. As such, many 'videos' are well-worth the watch ('Strawberry Fields' and 'Let it Be' to name two), but some do not really work like the rooftop finally.
Musically, first off, I am not a big Beattles fan so that did not help and I much preferred the music of Rent(2005), which the rebellious mood of the story reminded me of, Chicago (2002) and Dreamgirls (2006). The other problem with using Beatles song is that they do not work as well as songs that were conceived to move the narrative along as in a real musical. Also, when i comes to musical editing there is only one song that has has a strong musical dialogue with another song. Overall, I was very disappointed with the musical aspect in terms of music and lyrics. I don't think that even using Lennon's 'Imagine'-that was not used-could have saved it in my eyes, but Beatles fan may like it more or be even more critical, I'm not sure.
Still, quite a few nice directing choices and great execution can be seen. The scene where Sadie and Jojo fight on stage is great, Bono's appearance and the following funkadelic bus ride is interesting, the water sequences and the circle in the grass are memorable... A few breathtaking strokes of Taymor's artistry, but no strong backbone like the tale of Hayek's Frida. Keep at it Taymor, but I hope for a more complete piece next time.