#1,395. Across the Universe (2007) - The Films of Julie Taymor

Directed By: Julie Taymor

Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess, Joe Anderson




Tag line: "All you need is love"

Trivia: Release prints were delivered to some theaters with the fake title Love and Freedom








The first time I saw director Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe, a movie that spins the music of The Beatles into a story of romance, revolution, and war, I was swept away by its energy, and quickly fell in love with its singular style. It’s a love I renew each and every time I watch this exceptional film.

Set in the 1960s, Across the Universe tells the story of Jude (Jim Sturgess), a young man from Liverpool who travels to America to meet the father he never knew. Once there, he befriends Ivy League college student Max (Joe Anderson), who promptly drops out of school and, with Jude in tow, heads to New York.

Max’s sister, Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), whose boyfriend was recently killed in Vietnam, follows her brother to the city, and it isn't long before she and Jude are deeply in love. All three reside in an apartment / commune owned by the sultry Sadie (Dana Fuchs), a nightclub singer who has also rented rooms to former cheerleader Prudence (T.V. Carpio) and JoJo (Martin Luther McCoy), a guitarist from Detroit who will eventually join Sadie’s band.

The good times come to an abrupt end, however, when Max is drafted and shipped off to Vietnam. This drastic change in the group's dynamic puts Lucy’s and Jude’s relationship to the test. Hoping to save her brother, Lucy volunteers to work for an anti-war organization that Jude believes is much more militant than she realizes.

From the names of the characters alone, you get a sense of how influential The Beatles were on Across the Universe (“Hey, Jude”; “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”; “Dear Prudence”, etc). But it’s the music, most of which is performed by the film’s young cast, that makes the movie so damn appealing.

What amazed me was how director Taymor and her writers, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, built a complete story around the various songs, inserting each at just the right moment to ensure everything makes perfect sense. When Max introduces Jude to his fraternity brothers, we’re treated to a spirited interpretation of “With a Little Help from My Friends”, which pays homage to both The Beatles’ version of that song as well as Joe Cocker’s cover of it. Speaking of Joe Cocker, he turns up in the movie, belting out “Come Together” as JoJo, fresh off the bus from Detroit, walks the streets of New York City.

Along with Cocker, U2’s Bono also appears briefly as a psychedelic prophet (singing “I Am the Walrus”), and Jeff Beck provides a music-only rendition of “A Day in the Life”.

But it’s the film’s cast that truly shines, from Jim Sturgess singing “I’ve Just Seen a Face” (performed in, of all places, a bowling alley) to Joe Anderson’s “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, sung when Max is at the Army Induction Center. With so many great musical sequences, it’s hard to pick a favorite. But if forced to, it would be a tie between the three leads singing “Dear Prudence” (a sequence that is also visually stunning), and the gospel-influenced, very poignant version of “Let it Be”, performed at a young man's funeral.

Taymor does manage to throw a few non-Beatles references into the mix as well (Martin Luther McCoy’s JoJo looks exactly like Jimi Hendrix, while Dana Fuchs’ Sadie is an obvious tribute to Janis Joplin), but in the end, Across the Universe owes just about everything to Paul, John, George, and Ringo. With rich characterizations and well over a dozen great tunes, Across the Universe ranks alongside Moulin Rouge as one of cinema's most unique musicals of the new millennium.