Across the Universe (2007)
Sep. 26th, 2007 08:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randy_byersTook the anonymous housemate to Julie Taymor's Across the Universe for his birthday last night. It's a mess, but a beautiful, groovy mess. Taymor previously directed Titus (1999) and Frida (2002).
Comparisons of Across the Universe to Moulin Rouge are fairly apt. It's a post-modern musical using songs by the Beatles sung by various cast members, including at least a couple who don't have professional-grade voices (not to mention Eddie Izzard, who speaks his rendition of "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite"). As in Moulin Rouge, the use of normal voices lends a winning feeling of naturalism and vulnerability to what is otherwise an entirely artificial concoction. The dramatic structure and flow is nowhere near as coherent or powerful as Moulin Rouge, however.
Basically, it's a bunch of really imaginative eye-candy matched to groovy tunes. The way that much of the dancing is developed out of normal, mundane movements is quite clever as well, particularly a typically crowded sidewalk scene in Manhattan that becomes a massive dance and also a football practice that becomes an acrobatic ballet. Some of the set pieces, such as the gospel version of "Let It Be" used for a montage of simultaneous funerals for a soldier killed in Vietnam and the victims of a race riot, are very moving.
The movie was apparently taken away from Taymor and re-edited against her wishes. It's hard to say without more knowledge how much of the narrative mess is a result of clashing aesthetic choices. The story meanders. It does not pull its many strands together. It leaves many questions. (How did Jude learn to draw? How did Max kick the habit -- or did he?) But this is a visual feast, and I'm tempted to see it again just for the swirling spectacle. Then again, I'm a sucker for post-modern musicals.
Update: Looks like I was wrong about the re-edit. The production company was apparently unhappy with Taymor's original edit and did their own much shorter edit, but what was released in the theater was apparently pretty close to Taymor's original edit.
Comparisons of Across the Universe to Moulin Rouge are fairly apt. It's a post-modern musical using songs by the Beatles sung by various cast members, including at least a couple who don't have professional-grade voices (not to mention Eddie Izzard, who speaks his rendition of "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite"). As in Moulin Rouge, the use of normal voices lends a winning feeling of naturalism and vulnerability to what is otherwise an entirely artificial concoction. The dramatic structure and flow is nowhere near as coherent or powerful as Moulin Rouge, however.
Basically, it's a bunch of really imaginative eye-candy matched to groovy tunes. The way that much of the dancing is developed out of normal, mundane movements is quite clever as well, particularly a typically crowded sidewalk scene in Manhattan that becomes a massive dance and also a football practice that becomes an acrobatic ballet. Some of the set pieces, such as the gospel version of "Let It Be" used for a montage of simultaneous funerals for a soldier killed in Vietnam and the victims of a race riot, are very moving.
The movie was apparently taken away from Taymor and re-edited against her wishes. It's hard to say without more knowledge how much of the narrative mess is a result of clashing aesthetic choices. The story meanders. It does not pull its many strands together. It leaves many questions. (How did Jude learn to draw? How did Max kick the habit -- or did he?) But this is a visual feast, and I'm tempted to see it again just for the swirling spectacle. Then again, I'm a sucker for post-modern musicals.
Update: Looks like I was wrong about the re-edit. The production company was apparently unhappy with Taymor's original edit and did their own much shorter edit, but what was released in the theater was apparently pretty close to Taymor's original edit.
