Peter Viney's Blog

Across The Universe

Directed by Julie Taymor
Screenplay by Dick Clement & Ian La Fresnais

Songs produced by T.Bone Burnett, Elliot Goldenthal, Teese Gohl

2007

133 minutes

CAST
Jim Sturgess – Jude
Evan Rachel Wood – Lucy
Joe Anderson – Maxwell
Dana Fuchs -Sadie
Martin Luther McCoy- JoJo
Timmy Mitchum – JoJo’s younger brother
T.V. Carpio – Prudence
Spencer Liff – Daniel, Lucy’s boyfriend
Lisa Dwyer Hogg – Molly, Jude’s Liverpool girlfriend
Robert Clohesy – Wes, Jude’s father
Dylan Baker- Mr Carrigan. Lucy and Max’s dad.
Logan Marshall Green – Paco, a radical
+
Bono – Dr Robert
Eddie Izzard –  The ringmaster, Mr Kite
Joe Cocker- panhandler

A retrospective review, just having watched it for at least the fifth time. This sits with my most rewatched films: If …., North by Northwest, Casablanca, Cinema Paradiso, The Fall, The Last Waltz, The Darjeeling Limited. For me, yes, it’s that good. It has a low profile. According to IMDB, it cost $45 million, and grossed $29 million. That’s the sort of thing that makes movie executives forget to mention a film. However, I see there’s a 4K edition, and that’s an accolade … though it is Italian in origin, not British.

Here’s the concept. Take the entire Beatles catalogue (choose 30 songs from 200), add two of Britain’s greatest sitcom writers, Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais, create a story set around 1968, then have the cast sing the songs each of which fits the plot. Add stunning choreography.

There are scenes where a whole crowded street begins moving together, or a gridiron football team start throwing each other around, or a ten pin bowling alley erupts as everyone becomes human bowling balls. You take a moment to realize, this is ALL dance.

Jim Sturgess as Jude, Evan Rachel Wood as Lucy

It starts in Liverpool. Jim Sturgess is Jude … you can guess what songs are coming as soon as a characters introduce themselves by name ; though in the case of (Sexy) Sadie, Jo Jo (Get Back), Dr Robert and Maxwell(’s Silver Hammer), the characters don’t get the songs! Sturgess is well cast. He looks 60s Liverpool. Maybe his mouth is Lennonesque? The hair helps, but that’s easy. He works in the shipyard, and has a local girlfriend. And of course he starts singing on a lonely beach … Is anybody going to listen to my story …Yes, Girl. 

The second song, not an obvious choice is Hold Me Tight sung by Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood).

This sets out the 60s stall. We cut between some kind of prom, with everyone dressed alike, girls in layers of stiff petticoats, boys in tuxes, dancing in strict patterns in the USA. Lucy is singing Tell me I’m the only one … to her clean cut boyfriend, Daniel (no one could think of a Beatles song name, perhaps). Then we cut to the Cavern Club (same song) with moisture running down the walk, smoke wafting everywhere. Dark, packed shoulder to shoulder. Gritty. Grimy. England 1960s v USA 1960s. As we see other scenes, Liverpool remains grey while suburban USA bursts with bright pastel shades.

All My Loving. Liverpool: Jude and Molly in the alley

Jude is off to America, working his passage as an ordinary seaman. Meanwhile, Daniel has been drafted and is off to Vietnam via boot camp. As they pass the boot camp, we see football practice with cheerleaders, and we meet Prudence (T.V. Carpio). She’s wistfully singing I Want to Hold Your Hand as a jock walks off with a rival girl. Then she sets out to hitch-hike … just as Jude is doing the same.

I Want To Hold Your Hand. Prudence (T.V. Carpio) in Ohio

Jude arrives on the Princeton campus. We find he’s seeking his American dad. Jude was a wartime baby and his dad knows nothing of his existence. He assumes he’s a university professor, but he turns out to be a janitor.  So he meets Maxwell, and we get undergraduate boisterous high jinks (With A Little Help From My Friends).

Back to the pristine pastel sunlit suburb, where Lucy is walking home and gets a letter announcing Daniel’s leave (It Won’t Be Long.)

Max takes Jude home for Thanksgiving, and we meet his family and his sister … Lucy. Cue I’ve Just Seen A Face … from Jude. Dylan Baker has a cameo as the father, and is as noteworthy as ever.

Max decides to drop out of college, and Max and Jude travel to New York where they rent an apartment from a singer, the (very sexy) Sadie.

Back in the pastel sunlit suburb, Lucy walks home only to see two marines outside Daniel’s house delivering the dreaded message.

Detroit riots: Let it Be

We cut to the Detroit riots, where a small boy is singing Let It Be among the burning vehicles. We cut to his funeral where a whole gospel choir joins the song, and meet his guitarist older brother, JoJo, a Jimi Hendrix or perhaps Buddy Guy character. I add Buddy Guy because I once said Buddy Guy was imitating Jimi Hendrix in a review of the film of Festival Express and was deluged with blues fans pointing out the reverse was true. Daniel’s Marines funeral is intercut with the boy’s funeral. Anyway, JoJo sets off to New York, where he is recruited for Sadie’s band (Come Together). The song is one of two sequences where Joe Cocker appears as a pandhandler singing the lines.

Come Together: Joe Cocker

I’m not sure whether they saw Sadie as Tina Turner or Janis Joplin, probably a bit of both. She gets the hard-edged Lennon songs mainly … Why Don’t We Do It In The Road, I Want You / She’s So Heavy though later she gets Oh, Darling which I think is McCartney. Dana Fuchs (a name she would never have maintained through schooldays in England)  is a first rate rock singer.

Lucy travels to New York to join the party, and Prudence turns up too … through the bathroom window, and no, they can’t resist the line.

Jude, Lucy, Maxwell

Max gets his draft notice and burns it, but still has to report for induction, in one of the greatest scenes of the film, where a mechanical mass recruit dance robotic number is played out to I Want You. Incredible – one to watch on its own (as I often have). In spite of telling them that he’s a pacifist homosexual, he’s stamped A1. In.

I Want You (She’s So Heavy)

Before he goes, we get one of the musically strongest moments. Prudence is locked in the bathroom, distraught that Sadie (who she fancies) is with JoJo. They all sing a long and exquisite version of Dear Prudence.

Sadie is being signed by a Mr Big agent, and they  all go to his party where they imbibe dosed punch and it turns into an acid trip. Ken Kesey’s Merry Prankster’s have turned up in their psychedelic school bus seeking Mr Geary (a wonderfully Beatlesque renaming of Timothy Leary). They’re led by Dr Robert, and U2’s Bono plays him, and delivers a brilliant version of I Am The Walrus. There are several “fantasy” sequences in the film, but there is clear delineation between “real bits” and “dream bits.”

I Am The Walrus. Bono as Dr Robert. Jude and Lucy recumbent on right.

The trip sequence meanders into a circus tent for the Benefit of Mr Kite. That’s the first (and last) problem I have with the film. It’s sung by the Ringmaster surrounded by Blue Meanies. Eddie Izzard plays the ringmaster. He looks fantastic, but not to put too fine a point on it, his singing and interpretation is abysmal. Beyond awful. I like Izzard on TV, but when we saw him live, in the cavernous BIC hall, we were among dozens, if not hundreds, in the balcony who left at half time. We could see him, mumbling softly into a mic, but we couldn’t hear a single word. People were yelling ”Speak up!” The front four or five rows in the centre were in paroxysms of laughter. Those elsewhere didn’t hear a thing. Zero mic technique. Zero audience awareness. People were demanding refunds as we left. Anyway, his sequence is so excruciatingly bad that however much it had cost, I would have consigned it to the cutting room floor.

Being For The Benefit of Mr Kite: Eddie Izzard

We are now branching into three threads.

Jude and Lucy are falling in love. Jude’s discovered artistic talent and spends the days painting. Lucy has discovered politics, and has joined a radical anti-war group. Jude is jealous of the guys, especially the bearded leader, Paco.

Something: Jude and Lucy in artistic domestic bliss

In a reference which I love, Jude is trying to design a record label logo, starting by slicing a Granny Smith (well, being the USA maybe it’s an Oregon Newton) in two. Rejecting “Apple” he decides to go for a strawberry instead and starts a series of artworks pinning strawberries, which stream like blood. That is a weird and extremely inventive way of squeezing in Strawberry Fields Forever. Later that logo will reappear, and is the sleeve of the soundtrack 2 CD set.

Strawberry Fields Forever. Jim Sturgess as Jude

Maxwell is in technicolour in helicopter buzzing Vietnam shooting and being shot at.

Meanwhile, Sadie has decided to go solo and dump the band … OK, she is much more Janis Joplin who dumped two bands. JoJo decides to play discordant guitar during her rendition of Oh, Darling and she storms off stage. Purchasing a Flying V guitar does that to guitar players. JoJo finishes the song. There’s previous on that too … in Wild Tales, Graham Nash describes an insanely furious Little Richard berating his young guitar player for upstaging him with a solo. The young guitar player was Jimi Hendrix. Jo Jo is sacked.

Oh Darling: Sadie & Jo Jo

The jealous Jude goes to the radical offices and to Revolution gets into a fight with the guys. Interestingly, we chatted about it afterwards, and we agreed it was a British thing, but we were all rooting for Jude in the fight. I guess Jim Sturgess had won us over.

Jude and JoJo wander home to While My Guitar Gently Weeps to discover Lucy has moved out. Left him. He goes to Columbia University where a protest is taking place. Lucy has been grabbed by the police … so Jude moves in to get beaten senseless by the police and thrown in jail. He has no visa. His dad arrives and tried the American citizen route, but Jude will be deported.

Back to Liverpool and the shipyard where Jude has returned to work. His ex-girlfriend has a new bloke and is pregnant. We are intercutting – Max is in hospital in the USA (Happiness Is A Warm Gun). The warm gun has become a morphine syringe (which Lennon perhaps intended), which allows a fantasy musical sequence, just as the acid trip did earlier. Lucy is still protesting, and goes to the radical office where she finds them making bombs.

Happiness Is A Warm Gun. Max in bed

In Liverpool, Jude reads about the bomb blast killing the bomb makers (the second time I need to type hoist with their own petard in successive reviews).

Jim Sturgess. Back on the Mersey?

In the USA Max is out of hospital and duets Blackbird with Lucy in the same industrial ruins where she had wandered with Jude.

Jude saves up to  return to New York, and is met by Max, now driving a yellow cab. Lucy doesn’t know.  In a memorable piece of arrangement this is done to Hey Jude, then Max leaps on the fence to scream that Judee … Judee… Judee … line that McCartney had in the original.

Now they’re heading to a replica of London’s Let It Be rooftop sequence, transposed to New York, with Sadie, a forgiven JoJo, and her band on the roof (Don’t Let Me Down – as in the Beatles original). Both Jude and Lucy are invited to attend. Lucy can’t get through the police line, the band are escorted off the roof by police … Jude has hidden and goes to the mic to sing All You Need Is Love and guess what, there’s a happy ending. For those who were waiting right through to hear Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds it plays over the credits.

All You Need Is Love: Jo Jo, Sadie, Jude on the roof top

The main singers … Jim Sturgess, Evan Rachel Wood and Joe Anderson are obviously not Beatles standard … thinner and lighter, but it doesn’t matter because they’re acting the lines too. There are long lists of goofs and anachronisms on IMDB. If you notice them, you’re not getting the joy of the picture. On the other hand, enough people have watched it multiple times and then noticed them.