Across the Universe
Director: Julie Taymor. Screenplay: Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais. Cinematography: Bruno Delbonnel. Film editing: François Bonnot. Production design: Mark Rogness. Music: Elliot Goldenthal. Producers: Mathew Gross, Jennifer Todd, Suzanne Todd. With: Jim Sturgess, Evan Rachel Wood, Joe Anderson, Dana Fuchs, Martin Luther, T.V. Carpio, Andrew Asnes, Bono, Amanda Cole, Linda Emond, Lisa Hogg, Ellen Hornberger, Eddie Izzard, Spencer Liff, Angela Mounsey, Jacob Pitts, Jeanine Serralles, James Urbaniak. USA. 133 min. 2007.
By David Sterritt
Set in the turbulent 1960s, this offbeat musical tells the bittersweet story of a lad from England’s industrial north who visits the United States to meet the father who abandoned his family years ago. Landing on the campus of Princeton University, of all places, he makes a motley assortment of American friends and gets caught up in the decade’s social and political upheavals, despite his modest wish to become an artist and live a quietly creative life.
All of this is punctuated by a nonstop succession of song-and-dance numbers choreographed to Beatles classics, most of which are effectively performed by a wide array of talents, although the strenuous competition provided by director Julie Taymor’s imaginative visual style often makes it hard to judge the music on its own merits. The movie’s best moments blend startling, sometimes surrealistic imagery with the hard-edged energy and relentless pacing that characterize Taymor’s best work.
The picture would be a lot more exciting, though, if its plot packed a few surprises. The narrative twists are standard ‘60s-movie stuff, rendered extra bland by Taymor’s decorous depictions of sex, nudity, and psychedelics, which are treated in relentlessly well-mannered ways that utterly betray the period’s vigorously rebellious spirit. Ditto for Taymor’s portrayal of the Vietnam war and the radical activists who forcefully opposed it; although the violent passions of the antiwar movement are eventually allowed to rear their unruly heads, the film’s ultimate message boils down to “All You Need Is Love,” which made for a lovely Beatles lyric but hardly encapsulates the most important legacies of the era they helped to revolutionize.
So see the movie for its music and dances, and for the latest signs of whether Taymor is on her way to becoming a major auteur. (To my mind, the verdict is still out: “Titus” is terrific, “Frida” is a disaster, and this opus is somewhere in between.) But no matter how hard you tap your toe, don’t think this superstylized romp is giving you more than a nostalgic and sentimentalized counterfeit of the explosive 1960s themselves.
