You Can Still Find the Scattered Limbs of the Poet.

Rating: 7/10 (28 February 2009)

"Invenias disjecti membra poetæ." The scattered remains that Horace referred to are pretty much found here. Julie Taymor's film just about captures most of 1967 and 1968, illustrated in a thin but socially relevant story linking some Beatles songs of the period.
The songs are the thing. They're not the original releases, which we can now hear rendered peppily in WalMart by a thousand and one singing violins. These are fresh, more grand arrangements backed by choirs of cherubim. We see the jarring anti-war protests, the celestial calm of what passes for love among teens, doomed simulacra of Janis Joplin and Jimmi Hendrix and Timothy Leary, the real Martin Luther King, Jr., and the real Walter Cronkite broadcasting King's murder.
The songs include some of the less well known numbers, Prudence, as well as some of the overly familiar, Jude. The arrangements sometimes bring out a wistful beauty that was hidden in the original. "Give My Heart" is rendered more slowly and sung by a pure soprano. The tempo is slower and the electric guitars downplayed so that the silken harmonies become more apparent.
The Beatles were mostly a funny joke when they first appeared on the pop scene, with "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Some joke. After each of their albums, I was convinced that they'd shot their wad, that no improvement was possible given this increasingly loose-limbed approach, light years away from "I Want to Hold Your Hand." They continued to confound me. Today, I find it difficult to listen to the tunes since they evoke some memories that are, after all, tragic. I can't hear Lennon singing "they're gonna crucify me."
The direction and imagery are not light-hearted like "Yellow Submarine," and the directorial tricks are not exactly psychedelic in the sense of, say, Peter Max. Overall, it's a rather dark movie. The Vietnam War hovers over the whole thing and sometimes we are snatched away to Southeast Asia for a brief visit to the battlefield. The images are in fashionable high contrast and mostly rather gloomy, not in the spirit of Lennon et all but more in the sensibilities of today when the country or indeed the world seems wrapped in a nebulous hatred that is at least as intense now as it was then.
I can't think of an audience for a movie like this. For those in the age bracket we think of as most involved with pop music, the social and political issues are strictly of historical interest. They weren't born yet. And the music, I would guess, is imaginative enough to be a daunting challenge. But those who lived through that window in time are likely to be prosperous burghers by now, resentful of today's reckless and self-satisfied youth -- or perhaps youth in general. Kids today (he said creakingly) don't seem to be exploring, let alone experimenting. They already appear jaded without having gone through florescence.
It's a better flick than I'd expected. I thought it would be another exploitation of whatever box-office appeal the Beatles had left, but it's clearly more ambitious than that. A lot of effort has gone into the production and a lot of money and it deserves a decent return on both.