Across the Universe (Two-Disc Special Edition)

May 29, 2008 | By Doug In Dining Tables |

Across the Universe (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Set in America during the Vietnam War, Across the Universe is a powerful love story set against a backdrop of political and social unrest: it’s a story of soul-searching, self-doubt, and individual powerlessness cleverly conveyed through a multitude of Beatles songs. Like young adults all across America during the 1960’s, Jude (Jim Sturgess), Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), Max (Joe Anderson), Sadie (Dana Fuchs), Prudence (T.V. Carpio), and JoJo (Martin Luther) are in turmoil over the war; questioning their individual roles in the war effort and struggling to find a way to hold true to their beliefs while making a difference in the world. While love proves a powerful uniting force, its limitations become clear as relationships are strained and broken over individual perceptions of responsibility to cause and country. A fairly bizarre juxtaposition of extremely stylized, almost hallucinogenic scenes of swirling colors and reflections, highly choreographed dance segments, seemingly commonplace character interaction, and emotionally packed close-up footage of characters lost in contemplative song, this film imparts a good sense of the confusion and passion of the time and is at once powerful, invigorating, and disturbing. The film runs a bit long at 2-hours 11-minutes and several segments drag noticeably thanks to some incredibly slow song tempos. Warning: this production may change how you think about a favorite Beatles song forever. –Tami Horiuchi

Beyond Across the Universe

On Blu-ray

The Deluxe Soundtrack

Beatles audio CD

Stills from Across the Universe (click for larger image)

Customer Review: On the Concept of the Film
I really enjoyed this film as art, however I have my doubt on whether or not I enjoyed this film as a film.

The visuals were incredibly delectable, just look at the pictures on the Amazon page and other film websites and you’ll have some feel for this. Colors were swirling throughout the entire film and the composition of each and every scene were so perfectly thought out. As a fan of the Beatles, the choice of songs were terrific. While many online would complain and argue that this song is missing or another should be taken away, generally the songs selected were from each era and nearly every album of the Beatles’ oeuvre (that is the Beatles not the individual members after the break-up). The Director of this movie, Julie Taymor, did an amazing job at weaving these songs into a story about the love between two people, Jude and Lucy. While it is not a perfect weave, it is certainly, a heck of a feat. I also give her credit that she had the courage to even try it. I am not familiar with Taymor’s work, however two of her films (Titus and Frida) have been on my “To Watch” list for a long time. I have heard these films are also visually stimulating.

Another point:

My girlfriend, who is not American and whose native language is not English, did not particularly like this film. She told me that it was “all over the place” and she could not follow it very well. I realized that where her “all over the place” was simply cultural references that she may not have known so much about. Such as the when Bono and the “Merry Pranksters” roll through Manhattan on their way to “Dr. Geary”. For people who know what all of this means, you too may have gotten all excited the moment you saw that swirling colored bus drive through the streets. I did. There was also scenes from Vietnam and references to dodging the draft. While, I did enjoy all this, I now believe that my girlfriend’s thoughts are quite accurate, as Julie Taymor may have tried to put too much into this movie

Last to think about, as I thought about the movie some more, I also realized and agreed with something else my girlfriend said. About half way through the movie, all I felt like I was really doing was waiting for the next song. “Which one will be next? Oh, this is great, but what will be next?” In this respect, and not surprisingly, the music of the Beatles outweighed the film itself.

Customer Review: WOW!!!
Wow, this is an outstanding DVD. The extras were wonderful, the movie itself was extremely well done. I could have done without a lot of the puppet/mask work in the movie, but the songs were incredibly well done, the choreography was outstanding, the acting top-notch. Every single song gave me goosebumps, or tears. I knew these songs, who doesn’t? but they were done in such a way that made me listen again, and say, wow, that is an amazing song. wow. just plain wow. The extras explained how they decided to do the music and it was fascinating. i LOVED it.

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