Across the Universe

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with a solitary figure, Jude (Jim Sturgess), sitting on a quiet beachfront, singing Girl with a melancholy air, while looking off into the distant horizon. It's the end of the workday as Jude lines up with his fellow shipyard hands for their day's wages. After receiving payment from the old man in charge, Jude walks back home, smiling along the way.As he leaves, Hold Me Tight begins, while we flash to an idealistic prom scene, where Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) dances along with her boyfriend Daniel (Spencer Liff) and their classmates. A classic band plays along, as Lucy sings to Daniel Tell me I'm the only oneIn another part of the world, another couple in Liverpool is singing the same song as they dance at a dark underground Liverpool bar, a reference to the Cavern Club, where the Beatles began their career. Jude holds his girlfriend (Lisa Hogg) as she sings Let me go on loving you. Ambling along a dark, damp street after leaving the bar, Jude and his girlfriend hold hands and trip along the cobblestone. They stop to kiss along the road, as she tells Jude not to forget her while he is in America. He laughs and consoles her, singing While I'm away, I'll write home everyday, and I'll send all my loving to you. While Jude continues to sing All My Loving, he packs his bag, kisses his mom (Angela Mounsey), and heads off to the docks to board a ship to America, seeking out his estranged father in New Jersey.Back at Daniel's house, Lucy is seeing him off to boot camp and Vietnam. In his new uniform, Daniel drives off while Lucy runs after the car. We then see Lucy sitting on her bed writing a letter, clearly for Daniel.In an army vehicle we see Daniel reading the letter presumably from Lucy as he and his fellow recruits drive away from Boot Camp. The vehicle drives past a high school football field, where football practice is winding down, with cheerleaders running through their routines and watching the players on the field.After practice ends, a cheerleader, Prudence (T.V. Carpio), watches wistfully as a fellow cheerleader flirts with a football player. She softly sings I Want To Hold Your Hand as she watches her obvious rival walking away with the jock. As she watches them and sings, she walks off the field, into the unknown. We then see her on the side of the road, thumb extended. In a different part of America, Jude is doing exactly the same thing. A car pulls over for him and, momentarily trying to get in on the wrong side before realizing American cars are different, he gets in.Jude arrives at Princeton and stands on the academic quad while a student, obviously in a rush, tears his way through the crowd and drops all of his books and papers. While stooping down to help collect the papers, Jude asks the student if he knows a certain professor, believing him to be his father. The student, Max (Joe Anderson), is first at a loss, until he realizes that Jude is looking for the janitor (Robert Clohessy). He laughs, and points to a man washing windows on a ladder, saying "That's him."Introducing himself to the window washer, Jude explains who he is. At first, the man is surprised, saying that he didn't know the mother was pregnant, and that he would have married Jude's mother if he had known. Jude assures him that this apology wasn't what he wanted, but just wanted "them each to know that the other existed."Max, the charming and outgoing student from earlier, is on a roof with a few of his buddies as they chip golf balls off of a beer bottle at the nearby dormitory windows. After a few misses, he finally connects - and the group flees the angry mob that spills out of the dorm. Jude, seeing the commotion while out having a cigarette in front of the building that his father is letting him stay in, lets Max slip in to hide. Grateful, Max invites Jude to go out that night with himself and his golfing buddies. While proclaiming that they get by With a Little Help From My Friends, they smoke and drink their way through town until they finally collapse on couches from exhaustion.Lucy walks home from school with her friend, while she talks about missing her boyfriend Daniel. As they walk up to Lucy's house, her mom hands her a letter, smiling; it's from Daniel saying that he has been able to get a few weeks leave, and will be home soon to visit. Lucy launches into song as she flies up the stairs, excited that "It Won't Be Long" before she'll be back together with Daniel.For Thanksgiving break, Max invites Jude home for the holidays. After picking up Max's little sister, who turns out to be Lucy, they continue on home. At dinner, Max announces that he is dropping out of college and going to New York. An argument ensues, and the three decide to go out bowling to release some tension.At the alley, while they joke around and tease each other, Jude thinks to himself that he's "falling, yes he is falling" for Lucy while singing I've Just Seen A Face. When he and Max drive away to New York, Max warns Jude that Lucy has a boyfriend. Jude smiles and assures him that It's OK; he has a girlfriend too.Jude and Max arrive in the city, and after climbing to the top of a walkup, they enter a large apartment owned by a singer named Sadie (Dana Fuchs), who shows them the apartment, while several people lounge around playing the guitar or reading. Pleased with the apartment, they agree to pay two weeks' rent in advance, and become New Yorkers.Moving to the streets of Detroit during the race riots, a little boy cowers next to a car on fire, while black men and women run on the streets from the police. Staring out at the audience, he sings "Let It Be" among the violence. Moving into a church in the black community, while the choir swells, we see the same little boy laying in a coffin, obviously a casualty of the rioting. JoJo (Martin Luther) stands holding an older woman as she weeps, staring at the little boy's lifeless body. The little boy is his younger brother.Experiencing the same grief, we see Lucy weeping after a letter to Daniel's parents notify them of his death. She too, stares at the burial of her boyfriend, as soldiers fold up the flag and hand it to bereaved mother.As the song ends, JoJo slings a guitar over his shoulder, and walks down the street, heading to New York City himself. As he steps along, Come Together plays to the beat. Walking down the street, he sees a sign for Guitarist Needed at the bar "Café Huh?" and enters. Sadie is there, and gives him the role of lead guitarist in her band. He comes to the apartment to live; one night while he is playing a song on his guitar for Jude, a water-logged Prudence climbs into their bathroom window out of the rain, and becomes their newest roommate.After graduating high school, Lucy joins her brother Max and friend Jude in the city for the summer before she goes to college. While she's happy to see her brother, she's reluctant to give him the letter that came for him - a draft notice. At a party at the apartment that night, Jude falls again for Lucy, and breaks up with a girl that he was seeing. Lucy sings If I Fell while they dance, and finally kiss.The next day, Max reports to the draft board for his physical, and despite having swallowed an entire box of cotton balls in the hopes that it will show up as a shadow in x-rays, is deemed qualified for service. While he and a large group of men all endure rigorous physicals, they imagine an animated poster of Uncle Sam singing to them I Want You.Back at the apartment, Prudence is mourning the coupling of JoJo and Sadie, after having found herself infatuated with the singer. She locks herself into the closet, and the others sing Dear Prudence to coax her out of her hiding place. Despite this, Prudence leaves unexpectedly; no one is sure where she goes.The remaining gang goes to a party where an agent tries to convince Sadie to go solo. Tripping out on pink punch, the group embarks on a psychedelic cross-country bus trip. At a stop in a field, they see a circus run by Mr. Kite, and find Prudence in the troupe dating a contortionist named Rita.Max is now off to war, leaving Lucy angry and distraught. After seeing an anti-war speaker in the park, she decides to protest the war and call to bring the troops home. As Lucy devotes more and more time to the protest, Jude becomes jealous of the man that runs the group.Sadie has finally told the rest of the band that she is planning on going solo. Infuriated, JoJo purposefully ruins her opening song Oh! Darling with distracting and awful guitar riffs, forcing her to leave the stage. Having his own relationship trouble, Jude sinks into his artistic work while singing Strawberry Fields Forever. He and Lucy have now fought over her increasing involvement and obsession with her anti-war group, culminating in Jude confronting her at their headquarters while singing Revolution.After being kicked out, he walks by a window display of the announcement of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. While My Guitar Gently Weeps starts playing. He meets up with JoJo and gets drunk, only to find that Lucy has moved all of her belongings out of the apartment, leaving him. Later that day, he gets on a subway (to the song Across The Universe) to go to Columbia University, where the anti-war group's actions escalate to increasing violence, leading to police action at Columbia.Sadie starts singing Helter, Skelter at a club, while Jude, walking through, sees Lucy as one of the protesters being arrested by the police, and attempts to save her while she is being dragged away. She calls out to him, but he is overcome by the police and is arrested.At the same time, Max gets into a gunfight, where he is injured and has a dream sequence about naked Vietnamese mothers floating in the river.Meanwhile, Jude sits in his jail cell, as more and more prisoners are released. Finally, alone, his father comes to visit him and breaks the news that although the police will not press charges, he is being deported to England. He encounters Molly, his old flame, now pregnant with Phil's child.While he is walking home, the scene cuts to Lucy at Max's bedside in the VA hospital. He starts singing  Happiness is a Warm Gun in a sequence with Salma Hayek as a nurse.At one of her rallies, Lucy is in a phone booth, while her mother pleads with her on the phone to be careful and begs her to stop her involvement in the protests. Resolved, she argues with her mother, when a fight breaks out, and a bullet hits the phone booth. Lucy tells her mother she has to go and hangs up, then screams as she sees a protestor being mauled by a police dog. Uninjured but shaking in terror, Lucy sinks down while singing to herself that it'll be alright. TV scenes of the DC protests and the Pentagon protest show while Max watches at the VA hospital. Lucy goes back to the old protest headquarters and finds Paco making pipe bombs.[/i]A Day in the Life[/i] is playing as Jude gets off work, and he gets a newspaper and sees that the place where the protesters organized had blown up. Cut to him sitting on the beach... then cut to the wharf area in NY, where Max is sitting and Lucy sings Blackbird, while Jude wanders the beach and tidal areas in Liverpool.Jude gets back into his routine at the shipyards, then sits in a pub after work, having a pint. To the words of Hey Jude, sung by Max (as imagined by Jude as sitting next to him, while he is looking into a mirror behind the bar), he runs to his house to again pack his bags, and returns to the States (this time with a visa) to reclaim Lucy. Max meets him at Customs, and takes him to the building where Sadie and JoJo's reunited band is playing Don't Let Me Down to a cheering crowd on the streets.Unaware that Jude is back, Lucy is invited by note by Max to come to the concert. She is about to press the buzzer when she sees the strawberry logo Jude designed for Sadie, and old memories of her and Jude and the pain of the breakup come rushing back, and she walks away hurriedly. The police break up the concert as the crowd gathering gets larger. Jude hides from the police, and after being left alone on the roof, starts singing All You Need Is Love  into the microphone. Sadie, JoJo, Prudence, Max, and the rest all rush back up to the roof, and join in. Lucy hears Jude's voice, and frantically rushes to get into the building, only to be stopped by the police. She turns, and runs to a building across the street, and stares at Jude from the roof across the way. As the rest of the band join in with song, Jude catches Lucy's eye from across the building. She smiles as a tear runs down her cheek. Jude sighs and a smile of happiness slowly spreads across his face. Together in the end, they kiss as Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds plays during the end credits.

Tags: anti war, psychedelic, murder, romantic

Review:
If you're interested in seeing the movie, they'll be more enjoyable if they're unexpected.It's a bizarre and beautiful movie musical, almost a music video at times, that uses thirty- three of The Beatles' songs and director Julie Taymor's unique visual style to illustrate both a personal love story and the overall conflict in the sixties.
Julie Taymor takes this combination and makes it fun, instead of extra cheesy, and it is visually fascinating instead of the obnoxious MTV-video nightmare it could have been.I cared about the characters - and the cast of 'unknowns' have great star power and voices.
The soundtrack is stuck in my head as I write this (the new versions, not even the original songs) All corny jokes and references, and lapses in plot are forgiven, because Ms. Taymor manages to take a movie chock full of things that have been done a million times before and makes it as fresh and exciting as if it were all done for the first time.
I'm tempted to spill my credentials when it comes to Beatles music, but it's not exactly material in reviewing this movie purely on its own merits, so I'll resist.There's good and there's bad, but if my score is any indication, the bad greatly outweighs the good.The good: Some decent song renditions, and a misplaced Joe Cocker.
The movie flows along at an astoundingly disjointed pace, creating any and every excuse to have a musical segment possible - usually falling flat on its face in the process - with the most literal interpretations of the songs possible and some truly poor imagery and symbolism.As if the audience didn't have enough of being slapped in the face with giant Uncle Sam poster singing "I want you," the movie depicts just about every 60's cliché you can imagine.
Besides the codification of the 60s into convenient chewy clusters (one character drafted, another one black, a girl "too" involved in the anti-war protest movement , another in the club scene trying to sing like Janis Joplin...), in this movie, it appears they tried to build an entire plot around the 60s and most of the dialog out of (sung) Beatles songs.
Characters like Prudence were horribly underdeveloped; you could've taken her out altogether, and the only thing that would have REALLY changed would that you couldn't include "I Want to Hold Your Hand" or "Dear Prudence," and speaking of the former, that number was just one of the many examples where in the movie, you'd think they were trying to lead up to something, and then they'd drop it altogether.
The movie also traces a small group of friends and musicians who are swept up into the emerging anti-war and counterculture movements, along with the star-crossed lovers, Jude and Lucy.Interesting versions of more than 30 Beatles songs preformed by the cast, complete with cool cameos (Bono, Joe Cocker) and musical numbers with amazingly trippy choreographed dance routines.
They are all manic energy without real engagement.It does not help that all the characters are annoyingly and rather dishonestly tangential to historical reality - like a reminiscence of the great originals ('Jude' = 'Paul Macartney', 'Sadie' = 'Janis Joplin' for instance), or merely inserted as an incarnation of a song (the otherwise pointless 'Prudence'), or of something wildly trippy in a cartoonish way (a brilliant Eddie Izzard completely wasted in a misfiring farrago entirely bereft of any identification with the hippy ethos - to call it 'pastiche' would be to wildly over-praise it).Even the more 'down-to-earth' scenes back in Liverpool lack any substance at all: Even the Albert Docks location looks as gentrified here as it has become in reality, at the hands of the property developers.
They are still being passed around- the music and the ideas." Bob Dylan (1992)It's far too true, everyday I see a teenager wearing an already faded Abbey Road shirt, America is dying due to the fact that every child claims that classic rock bands like The Beatles are the ultimatum to music and that they are individual because they listen to a band as complex as The Beatles this anticipated release of "Across The Universe" was merely a trip across your dad's LP collection except with bad vocal talent and little pictures to look at, if you're really in the mood for "The Beatles" go get an actual Beatles album and enjoy..
If you were a part of the 60's, loved the Beatles or were influenced by their music, or if you just want to see some phenomenal performances in a beautifully told story...Do not miss this film..
There is no depth to any of the characters, and sometimes some of the lyrics make no sense because they didn't alter them to fit the plot.This makes the BeeGee's Sgt Pepper's movie look like a work of art...avoid it if you love the Beatles..
(I kept thinking how they sounded like Ewan McGregor, and Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge - they shocked the producers, who let them try their own singing in that film.) I thought the re-do of the Beetles songs sounded fantastic, except for "Mr. Kite" which I hated.
Also the way they synched the songs with what was going on in the story, and the way they synched certain lyrics with a few things on screen here and there was very clever, and refreshing.I have always remembered the 60's with the Dickens quote from A Tale Of Two Cities "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times......." If you are too young to have lived the 60's, look that entire opening sentence up, and see this film, because it so perfectly captures the awe and turbulence, the artistry and combustion, and more than anything the wonderment and beauty of that controversial time in American history..
The movie is fantastic, it was such a pleasing film experience.Julie Taymor has always been a very visual director, since Titus, I praised her as a director with extremely rich visual ideas, and compared her to the likes of Baz Luhrmann, which is funny now, cause when the film started, I realize Julie Taymor had a very similar intention with Across the Universe, to that of Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge!, however, I'm of the opinion that Luhrmann was modestly effective, while Taymor hits the nail with absolute precision and perfection.Even though I was a Musical Lover Freak, that I'll admit to, I had a hard time accepting Moulin Rouge!, I enjoyed it visually, as well as the performances, but I don't know, I was sort of a put off with the messy use of music, which really distracted me from the movie, which was supposed to take place in Pre WW1 Paris, but felt like some weird, annoying place, a musical version of a bad Three Stooges Episode, which I know sounds a little too tough on the film, but that's what I though.
The opening scene, is a perfect example of just how effective the use of the Beatles was, the comparison of late 50s, early 60s Americana Life Style, with a very industrial and rough Liverpool Life Style, from there on, the movie becomes a fantastic musical in all the classical sense, it's so classic that the film could be easily translated to Broadway.People have said the most inane things like "the film has no plot"...no plot?
And regarding the visual and special effects, I think Taymor was a bit gratuitous with the effects back in Frida, but here, they are all in service of the plot, even if some of the scenes seem like scenes that would go great with a little LSD, they are all used for the effect of creating that 60s feel and look in which the movie moves about with a delicious comedic overtone.All of these praises go to the master behind the film, Julie Taymor, she deserves more credit than what she has been getting, the incredibly imaginative and exciting musical sequences are excellent.
Who cares if it's music from the Beatles, the Beatles are pretty much the official soundtrack of the 60s, and it's not like the film is just a big bloated Beatles tribute, it's a tribute to the decade, and the whole music scene of the decade, aside from the numerous Beatles references, there are references to Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Morrison.I wanted to focus my review on Julie Taymor's work, but, the whole film is amazing, the cinematography, the production design , Albert Wolsky proves he is still champ of the musical genre.
And the cast, aside from Evan Rachel Wood, most of them are young, fresh faces, which works wonders, since you are not ever wondering about who dubbed that song, you take all the stuff in, without having second thoughts or reservations.I recommend you see the film, it's great, and if you have a beef about it using Beatles music, well, I only have one thing to say, DEAL WITH IT, it's not like the film is abusing the Beatles legacy, if anything, it's giving it a standing ovation, and it's fitting for the period, and the tone of the picture, so...that's pretty much it, just..."let it be, let it be, let it be"..
A revolutionary work of art set in the decade of the sixties takes you on a trip through all the changes in culture, history and society that took place in that time, with awesome music and wonderful film-making it is a must see picture!!!
The movie has an extremely incoherent story, that is just an excuse to showcase some young actors singing Beatles songs.
That's what's supposed to be a movie with Beatles music, instead of a stupid love tale with a couple a no-names singing to each other, tearing apart some of the most beautiful songs in the history of the universe.This?
I saw this movie's screening about a month ago and had completely blocked the experience from my mind this morning until i was listening to Abbey Road.It would be cruel to call "Across the Universe" a two hour music video because it tries so hard to be more than that, but it wouldn't be entirely inaccurate either.
The movie can be summed up as a series of punctuated scenes and characters each represented by a Beatles song and strung together by a boilerplate love story.Of course, these criteria don't preclude the movie from being a true gem.
It is succession of topics about the sixties, all together in 133 minutes: rock music, the Vietnam war, drugs, youth power, the fight of the rights for black people and so, badly linked together with Beatles songs.
Graft songs by the mostly apolitical, rather surreal and very British Beatles onto a story involving mostly American characters fighting the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement; have most of the songs integrated into the film in a completely literal and obvious way; don't reference the musical nature of the 60s at all otherwise except by showing a Janis Joplin and a Jim Hendrix clone, thrown together with the English hero Jude (a poor working-class lad from Liverpool doncha know) and the love of his life, Lucy (in the Sky with Diamonds, of course).
Every time something happens with her character, more questions arise than are answered.If you're up for seeing some occasionally interesting visuals, and halfway decent covers of Beatles songs, then you MIGHT enjoy this movie.
She developed the Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge" style of adapting popular songs, with the psychedelic direction of Rafael Fracacio's "Julia's Journal", to improve a new way of making musicals.All that magic feeling of the sixties is combined into this great masterpiece of pop culture, that, in my humble opinion, is the best picture of 2007..
The weird thing is that none of the versions of the songs done by the actors is really any good all by itself (so DON'T get the soundtrack), but they were enhanced drastically by the beautiful and mind-blowing imagery and the charming story."Across The Universe" tells of the coming of age of a group of flower-power kids.
There are also several notable cameos in the film, I'd also love to see a stage version of the movie, maybe Julie Taymor will work on this in the future...
Like young adults all across America during the 1960's, Jude (Jim Sturgess), Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), Max (Joe Anderson), Sadie (Dana Fuchs), Prudence (T.V. Carpio), and JoJo (Martin Luther) are in turmoil over the war; questioning their individual roles in the war effort and struggling to find a way to hold true to their beliefs while making a difference in the world.
I thought Jim Sturgess, who played Jude, was probably the best-developed and most believable character of everyone, but the rest of them felt like archetypes ripped and Xeroxed from Oliver Stone movies and Milos Forman's "Hair".
Plus, the Vietnam scenes were so underdeveloped (Compared to other Vietnam War films such as "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket") and Max's character so forgotten by the end that I really felt the movie didn't have a message.Continuing on the subject of characters, I thought the characters of Jojo (played by Martin Luther McCoy) and Sadie (played by Joan Osbourne lookalike Dana Fuchs) were almost unnecessary.
It's the film equivalent of taking all of Picasso's work, hacking it to little bits and having those pieces rearranged by a far lesser artist into some hackneyed "interpretation" of what someone thinks Picasso was trying to "say." Now, one might argue that the Beatles' music are pop songs, not great art, and therefore are game for this kind of "homage." Fair enough.
But if you truly love the Beatles like I do, forgo this bomb of a movie, and, instead, pop on some headphones and listen to their music.
The characters, and the actors playing them, are lively, talented and full of the kind of life that these songs require.I am in love with this movie..
It's called "Hair." As if we need yet another anti-war movie, like "Hair" this is a musical using Beatles songs.
While it worked for Lucy, an effective Evan Rachel Wood; Jude, relative newcomer Jim Sturgess in a great turn as our lead; and Max, Joe Anderson with the best performance of the film, it was too strained for others like Mr. Kite and Dr. Roberts.
As nearly everyone aware of this film knows, it's a musical with a story outlined and directed by a selection of Beatles songs, one of them sharing a title with the movie.
To me, what is portrayed is all that that wonderfully uplifting and energizing song can be about, and consequently a imaginative personification of how it can make you feel.The film's story, revolving around the arching transformations of our culture throughout the 1960s seen with the focus upon a group of people who become affiliated with each other and drift in and out of each other's lives like the tempests and flights of fancy that were very much what the Beatles' music was for people's lives in that era, which is the central reason why Taymor's vision is so wonderfully ablaze with the true meaning of the word "brilliant." Not just because the premise sounds unfamiliar compared to what we normally see.
a surprise!thats what it was...i first saw the poster on the London underground...i thought it would be one of these interesting movies that i d like to see..probably on a DVD...well...being in a relationship as sweet as that of mine...such posters make a click on you...so i IMDb-searched and thought it would be really amazing...you don't really have to love Beatles as i do but if you do and if indeed their songs have been there in almost all of your really good and really bad times then u d understand and feel the shivers as i did!!!!cried in hey Jude and all you need is love(i love it when they all sing with such passion!)...prudence had an amazing voice!!!amazing!!!you ll really love it especially if you are together with your boyfriend/girlfriend!!!.
This movie makes you feel as if you are going along this journey of Beatles songs.It's not like a normal musical in which characters just burst in to songs, they do it subtly and with a kind of seamless flow.
Even if, in hindsight, the film is not without its flaws, I must applaud veteran screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais and director Julie Taymor  not just for their bravery in making this almost impossible task work but because, more often than not, the results are brilliant and occasionally dazzling.To begin with, 33 songs from The Beatles' repertoire are redressed to suit the actors who perform them and the characters they portray are also named after famous Beatles creations: the main protagonists are British dockyard-worker Jude (Jim Sturgess) who goes to America to look for his janitor father whom he has never met; along the way, he makes friends with spoiled rich kid Max (Joe Anderson) and soon falls for his sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood); meanwhile, their sluttish landlady Sadie (Dana Fuchs) is silently lusted after by Asian misfit Prudence (T.V. Carpio) but the former has set her own sights on colored guitarist Jo-Jo (Martin Luther McCoy) whom she engages in her own rock band.
With a story set between 1967 and 1968 and filled with musical and cultural references this is a fantastic film that really takes you back to that period, making you sing along with The Beatles classics performed by the great ensemble cast and singers like Bono and Joe Cocker.
It was a great mix of things.In the beginning I thought the movie was becoming one of those musicals where you almost laugh at it, many of the songs wasn't good performed by the actors but when Joe Cocker appeared singing "Come Together" I was really in the mood of the film, and after that it was delightful to follow and at many times sing along almost all the songs.
'Across the Universe' is a powerful musical in which all songs are by The Beatles.