Taymor's eye is far reaching but her voice is muffled and predictable

Rating: 7/10 (22 January 2011)

'Across the Universe' is an achievement. It is hard to remember a film that looked so original. Kinetic energy bursts off the screen. Visually it beats some of the great special effects epics of recent memory. The pulse of the film is the music of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. All of these are elements for success and yet 'Across the Universe' alludes greatness. The film is a musical through and through and sadly it hurts the finished product. What we have here that hurts the film is a boring and pieced together script.
Julie Taymor is a brilliant director. I love all her films if only for their visuals. She handles the camera and actors beautifully. The one problem she has is that she is a very poor writer. 'Titus' is her best film because she has the framework of Shakespeare to work around. 'Frida' works in the same way give or take but we definitely see Taymor lose stability in the plot. 'Across the Universe' is her worst picture because she is given free reign to create a world with nothing more than the Beatles songs to piece it together. The story plays like someone who has seen way too many over the top musicals. Rather than work with a story first it seems as if Taymor has a list of Beatles songs she wants and has to bend the story to fit it and thus the transitions and characters seem void of reality. The very worst musicals are the ones where the characters never explicitly break the fourth wall but acknowledge that a fourth wall exists, 'Across the Universe' sadly falls into this category. I wonder what the film would have been like had Taymor built the script upon steadier foundations. I kept asking myself "Why not do 'Romeo and Juilet' in the counter-culture sixties to Beatles songs?" She is essentially doing a lot of that already and of course the theme of the picture is young love. Taymor's brilliant understanding of Shakespeare could have done this and the story would have seemed much more real. Instead we kind of get an over the top time capsule that isn't sure where it wants to go or how it wants to get there. We get brilliant renditions of Beatles songs but the wrap around are just silly and inorganic. I have no complaints about the brilliant rendition of "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" but the set up for it is so wrong and forced that it almost takes away. 'Across the Universe' might have worked better as a collection of music videos.
That being said the narrative is completely to be damned. The performances and characters are likable enough.