A Film For People With ADD, Who Want To Go On An Acid Trip

Rating: 6/10 (6 November 2007)

Across The Universe is a musical that tells the story of multiple people living in the time of the Vietnam war. A young man travels from Liverpool to find his father, but ends up falling in love with a young American.
Stanely Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was a a technical and artistically remarkable film, but it lacked a story, had a long running time and had very little entertainment qualities about it, which ended up hurting the film. Julie Taymor's Across The Universe runs down the same path, it's visually beautiful and full of life, but the lack of story and long running time does more damage then one would imagine.
Across The Universe is many things, but above all it is ambitious. It's a musical set to Beatles songs. In a time when the musical is pretty much dead, Taymor relies on visuals and the popularity of the Beatles to bring in the audience. It's a shame that that is all she relied on because the film is severely lacking many things. What it excels in, it does so beautifully, what it fails at is key to what connects the audience to the film. You can't simply have a character sing a verse of a song and expect people to connect just because it's the Beatles.
Across The Universe is for people with ADD and who want to go on an acid trip. The film has no real set course, it jumps from one song to the next and from one bizarre and beautiful image to the next. One minute you're with Bono on a bus, the next you're underwater naked. If you're able to keep up with the bombastic images thrown on the screen then you will really enjoy yourself. Every image that is shown on the screen is ripped straight out of a Beatles song. When you hear Strawberry Fields Forever, you see Strawberry Fields. This could ruin some imagery you might have while listening to those songs.
The film changes it's direction, from the journey of this young man, named Jude, to the anti war movement with Lucy. Yup, those are their names, along with Max and Prudence and Sadie. All the character names are taken out of the songs as well. Also, it doesn't take a genius to know that the song Hey Jude would inspire this character to do something. The characters, who all are modeled after icons in the music industry, such as Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain, have very little are no arc. With the exception of the two leads, Lucy and Jude, both acted very well by Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturgess, everyone seems to be one noted. Sadie has one conflict in the film, it is never explored, Prudence has lots of conflict, that is never explored. Prudence even disappears half way through the film, only to show up again at a hallucinating sequences.
A lot of the images are beautiful and you will without a doubt encompass it all, but there are still some that are too bizarre to connect to the story. One scene we see Asian woman naked, with their bodies painted white who stand on water, then they dive backwards under it. What does this, and many other symbolic elements mean? We are never told and can't sit and think because the next image is thrown at us right after.
You will be tapping your toes to the music and singing along as well, if you know the lyrics. There were two or three songs I didn't quite know, but I'm sure the hardcore Beatles fans will know them all. Although, not all the songs are happy dance numbers. Some of them are poorly done, surprisingly I Am The Walrus from Bono is one of them. Jor Cockers take on Come Together is a highlight as well as the army sequences performed to She's So Heavy.
Across The Universe is ambitious, beautiful and will have you singing along to the tunes. It's about thirty minutes too long and has very little character development and plot, but the story is there. It's just sung aloud in song and not really performed. If you can get pass a lot of the obvious film images and metaphors, like Prudence coming out of the closet, then Across the Universe is a film for you.