As someone who owns those beautifully packaged Music Video Director Packs, which contain the videos of various prominent directors like Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze, I figured that I could approach Across the Universe with the right spirit. I thought that if I went in expecting a bunch of imaginative musical sequences set to Beatles tunes and tried not to care too hard about how they were strung together, it would all be ok. And I was about half right.
The film does start off rather promisingly, full of mirth and color and strong character introductions. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is used to reveal an Ohio cheerleader's true love, “Hold Me Tight” shows the lead characters’—Lucy and Jude’s—very different backgrounds. “Come Together,” sung by Joe Cocker, plays as one of the best “Welcome to New York” sequences I’ve ever seen. A tie-dye bowling alley is a choreographer’s playground in “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and the mandatory civil rights/Vietnam montage is surprisingly moving when partnered with “Let it Be.” As the film goes on, Julie Taymor feels like the perfect director for this 60s-set project. But then it becomes very clear that Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais were not the right people to write it.
When the film starts to take its story seriously—deathly seriously—is when it falls apart. The characters are, oddly, much better when they’re not fully realized. As simple era-appropriate archetypes onto which we can project events, memories, and meaning, they work just fine, because the songs they’re singing are already familiar to us. But when the filmmakers try to squeeze blood from Lucy, Jude, and the others, it all becomes a little painful and they become a lot less likeable. A large part of that is that the cast of mostly unknowns are, for the most part, not very good actors. Clearly cast for their voices and looks, their emotions never project past the screen. The lyrics fill in the blanks more often than they should have to and you get the feeling that, in a way, this story doesn't quite deserve these amazing songs.
Another large problem is, sadly, the adherence to PG-13 conventions. Some of the scenes would simply make far more sense if the implied drug use was shown. In others—“With a Little Help from My Friends” includes an embarrassing pantomime of “getting high with a little help from my friends”—it plays as stupid and patronizing.
In the second half, Taymor occasionally uses her grand visuals to keep the interest—“Happiness is a Warm Gun” is an exciting burst of energy and, well, uh…”Strawberry Fields Forever” is ok. But it’s the first half hour that shows what the movie could have—and should have—been: an inventive director using all her resources to resurrect the inherent beauty of the songs by the world’s most important
band.About Taymor's Fight With the Studio on Final Cut:
1 comments:
I agree with pretty much everything you say here.
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