I’M A SUCKER for an interesting mess. Combine that fact with
a 33-song Beatles musical and one of my favorite directors (Julie
Taymor, of Titus and Frida fame), and how can I not fall
head over heels for Across the Universe, one of the biggest,
noisiest, most irksome messes that’s come along in a while. But that’s
also what makes it so freakin’ great.
From the opening minute, Across the Universe hits you like a
ton of Fab Four bricks, as Liverpudlian Jude (my new boyfriend, Jim
Sturgess) sings about “a girl you want so much it makes you
sorry”—a girl named Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). And what follows is
a thin love story that spans the ’60s. The “plot” centers on Jude
traveling to America to find his father, and befriending Max (Joe
Anderson) and his sister, Lucy. And as the clean-cut ’60s get harrier,
the trio moves to New York to enmesh themselves in the psychedelic
scene. But the plot is just an end to a means—to set the stage
for a full-on bombast of Beatles songs that soundtrack the decade.
When Across the Universe is on—boy howdy, is it on.
Like when Max undergoes his Army induction: Young men in their
underwear are probed, prodded, and processed via conveyer belts by
creepy mask-wearing GI Joes while “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” blares.
Or after Max gets back from Vietnam and he’s begging his nurse (or
rather five nurses, all played by Salma Hayek in a sexy nurse outfit)
for a hit of morphine, as wounded soldiers’ beds flit and fly around
the hospital ward.
But the good of Across the Universe is overwhelmed by the
clichéd and the embarrassingly bad—there’s the
inappropriate bursting into song every two seconds, the psychedelic
swirly freakout of riding on Dr. Roberts’ (played by the butt-cringing
Bono) prankster bus, and a the reliance on cutesy in-jokes.
Taymor’s film has had a tough time of it: Studio executives
attempted to take away her final cut, and at one point she threatened
to remove her name from the film. When watching the final version, it’s
hard to say if Taymor got to put her finishing touches on
it—there are several points where her patented flourishes shine
bright, only to be butted up against some of the most artless scenes
from the film. But goddamn, it’s still a blast to watch.