10.20.2007

Across the Universe



So Kates and I went out on the town last night and caught "Across The Universe."

That was one trippy film.

A trippy love story, actually.

Kates and I were blown away when we caught the trailer for the musical/film on TV a few weeks ago. That was the only time we saw anything regarding the film, and it was playing in limited cities ...

This weekend we discovered it had come to ours, so we broke at the chance to see it ...

Without giving too much away, the film takes place in the 1960s as a young British lad travels to America in search of his father, who he'd never met. In the states, he befriends a rebellious college student and his sister. They eventually fall in with a bohemian enclave with whom they share an apartment and embark on a journey that's full of love, romance and anti-war sentiment ...

If you know your Beatles stuff. It's all there, and it makes the movie a lot more fun ... The main characters are Jude and Lucy. Their friends include Maxwell. Sexie Sadie. Prudence. JoJo. Mr. Kite. Dr. Robert. And Rita, though she was contortionist, not a meter maid ...

A lot of Beatles lyrics and references are smartly thrown in some of the dialogue as well. Early in the film an elderly man tells Jude: "I thought I'd be doing something different when I'm sixty-four." ... When Prudence arrives in the apartment, the characters point out she came in through the bathroom window. ... While Sadie is giving Max a tour of the apartment she comments that Max seems like a guy who could have murdered his grandmother with a hammer. And in another scene Max is holding a silver hammer ... Jude, an artist, is seeing drawing an apple, like the Apple Records logo ... There's also a rooftop concert at the end of the film ...

And though I would've liked to to see it once more to be sure, there's a split-second shot at the end of the film with Lucy standing on the top of a building, and there's a railing in front of her. The camera angle portrays her with a perfect blue sky behind her, and I swore the railing in front of her was decorated with diamonds = Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

(Wikipedia does have a good post about some more of the film's insights ...)

Having had some time now to think about it and take it in, I thought the film was pretty good. Not great, though ...

At times, especially throughout the first half, the film feels disjointed and clunky and forced -- as though a group of writers, who happend to be huge Beatles fans, sat around a table and said "Hey! Let's try to write a Beatles movie that incorporates a bunch of Beatles songs!" It's a genius concept, that doesn't necessarily translate well on film ... But I can't blame the creators for trying, because it's something I'd try to do too ...

I've been a fan of Evan Rachel Wood's for awhile, and I thought she succeeded again here, along with Jim Sturgess as Jude, grouped with a decent supporting cast ... Joe Cocker and Bono were added bonuses too.

Really, for me, the highlights of the film were almost all of the musical numbers, each of them built like their own little music video ... with "I've Just Seen A Face," (this is only a snippet of the video, so you won't see the dazzling visual effects as the cast dances across the bowling lanes...) "Dear Prudence," and "Because" among my favorites. Though all of the Beatles songs are given a refurbished edge for the film, all of it proves once again just how defining and remarkable the band was ...

If you're a Beatles fan, I say go see it ... and go with an open mind.

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