Across the Universe
It's not difficult to describe this movie. It's a remake of Hair with
Beatles songs substituted for the original songs. Period. Oh, nobody said that
officially, but it's pretty much the same movie as Hair. In case you've
forgotten Hair, it's a Vietnam-era musical with singing and dancing hippies,
singing and dancing draft physicals, etc. Love stories are interwoven with the
snapshots of the hippie-era cultural landscape. There isn't much more you need
to know. The difference between the two films, besides the songs, is that
Across the Universe has the benefit of hindsight. Over the years, some
memories of events and people which were vivid at the time have faded, and our
images of the late 60s have coalesced into a few shorthand images: Peter Max
posters, Vietnam, Jimi Hendrix, Bobby Kennedy's assassination, psychedelic
images, lava lamps, Janis Joplin, draft notices, Ken Kesey, Kent State, free
love, Che posters, Timothy Leary ... and the Beatles. Across the Universe
populated its scenes with those images and characters. Bono is a Ken Kesey
clone. There's a Jimi clone, and a Janis clone, and mention of a "Dr. Geary."
The film received about a 50% score at RT and Metacritic, but not in the
usual way. More often than not, such a score is the result of many middling
reviews which might have gone either way with a bit of a nudge. In this case
the score resulted from some passionate "yeas" and "nays." Roger Ebert, for
example, gave the film his highest rating (****), saying:
"Julie Taymor's Across the Universe is an audacious marriage of
cutting-edge visual techniques, heart-warming performances, 1960s history
and the Beatles songbook. Sounds like a concept that might be behind its
time, but I believe in yesterday. I was drowning in movies and deadlines,
and this was the only one I went to see twice."
On the other side of the ledger, Premiere magazine said:
"A few folks I've heard have defended this film on account of its having
its heart in the right place. I don't really know where its heart is, quite
frankly, but I know for sure said heart isn't doing its job of pumping blood
to the brain very well."
And James Berardinelli wrote:
"The songs are a bigger distraction than the visuals. With only a few
exceptions, most of them are out of place. They are shoehorned in simply to
increase the film's Beatles music content. The expected approach in a
musical is for the songs to advance the story. In Across the Universe,
the narrative pauses roughly every seven minutes so the characters can break
into song, then resumes when they're done. This approach makes it impossible
to identify with the characters or be interested in their circumstances.
And, while the singing is of variable quality, most of the dance numbers are
amateurish."
I suppose those reviews may tell you as much about the reviewers than about
the movie. The film has gigantic positives: director Julie Taymor is brilliant
at staging bold, ambitious, often symbolic visual set pieces and she used 33
Beatles songs in whole or part. The film also has gigantic negatives: it's
virtually humorless, it's too similar to Hair, and everything about its
non-musical content is either patently obvious, completely superficial, or a
60s cliché used as a short cut to the intended message. And none of the
Beatles songs are originals, so people will have varying reactions to the new
cover versions. I believe that your appreciation of the film will depend how
you weigh each of those characteristics. If you want to be dazzled with an
often surreal visual extravaganza set to Beatles songs, and you don't care
that the songs are performed by others, it's your kind of movie, as it was
Ebert's. If you're looking for an authentic look at the 60s told in music,
just re-watch Hair, which was written by real Age of Aquarians.
Evan Rachel Wood
Three film clips
He Was a Quiet Man
Bob is the ultimate office drone, a character not unlike Milton, the mumbly
stapler guy in Office Space. He sits in his office performing tedious data
entry procedures on long lists of multi-digit numbers, all the while
fantasizing about going Columbine on his co-workers. One day he goes to work
and begins to load a handgun, determined to execute his murderous plan for
real, but as he crawls on the floor to retrieve a dropped bullet, he hears
gunfire.
Another drone in another cubicle has beaten him to the punch! Bob
(Christian Slater) uses his own pistol to execute his fellow loser - thus
making him the office hero.
He is given a big promotion, a massive raise, and some new
responsibilities. His boss also tells him to go to the hospital and visit the
gorgeous co-worker (Elisha Cuthbert) whose life he saved when he killed the
office gunman. It turns out that Cuthbert is not very grateful. She has been
turned into a quadriplegic, and wishes Bob had let the gunman finish what he
started. She makes him promise to finish the job by pushing her wheelchair in
front of a subway train. He tries, but can't go through with it and pulls her
wheelchair away at the last minute. Then a miracle occurs. She gets a bit of
life back in one hand, and the medicos say she may recover. This time she is
grateful to Bob for saving her life. Bob proceeds to become her full-time
boyfriend and caregiver, and they start to fall in love, but he harbors fears
that if and when she recovers, she will return to the hunky, rich guys she
knows how to get on demand.
Have I spoiled the film? Not at all. That's the set-up. The story goes on
from there, and eventually leads to a surprise ending which I never saw
coming, although it explained a lot of problems I had with some earlier
events. Some reviewers called the ending ambiguous, but I disagree. It was
completely clear to me what had happened, particularly when I thought about
some earlier events that had seemed confusing. I found the ending
disheartening, but not ambiguous. I also found it quite affecting, although
many other films have used similar twists, as have many episodes of the
Twilight Zone. I half expected Rod Serling to come out of the shadows at the
end, puffing away on his usual unfiltered ciggie and pontificating solemnly
about the irony of it all.
The script takes us through a few tone shifts, going from jittery suspense
to black comedy to social satire to tragedy, and all of the stages are
pictured inside a dream-like point of view that always borders on the surreal
and occasionally crosses the border. For example, Bob owns a talking fish who
mirrors his own world-view. The film's strangeness can prove annoying along
the way, but it actually makes perfect sense when all the secrets have been
revealed. Christian Slater does an excellent job playing the complete
antithesis of his usual cock-sure prick. This time he played an armed and addled
Dilbert: quiet, dumpy, and nerdy; and he carried the film on the character's
narrow shoulders, with able back-up from the film's cinematographer, who
bathed the film in an otherworldly luminescence and employed some dramatic
shots and odd camera angles to give the film a surreal look to match its tone.
It's rated 8.2 at IMDb, high enough to place in the best 100 films of all
time. It's not that good, but I would not be surprised to see the rating stay
in the range of 7.0-7.5. Although surrealism and black comedy are best taken
in small doses, Quiet Man's running time is an economical 95 minutes, so it
never has a chance to overstay its welcome, and it is a surprisingly good
little film.
Elisha Cuthbert's
body double. (Must be. She has a no-nudity clause.)
