Across The Universe

On Saturday, we saw Julie Taymor's Across the Universe, a musical featuring a soundtrack composed entirely of Beatles songs re-recorded by people who are most definitely not the Beatles and Bono.

My friend Emily firmly believes (and I'm inclined to agree) that certain bands/musicians should be off-limits when it comes to covers. Among these are the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin (do we really need another garage band trying to do "Stairway"?), Pink Floyd, Radiohead, and Leonard Cohen, but that's by no means a comprehensive list. The real problem, as we see it, is that most folks just can't do the songs justice. They get it wrong or just don't add anything worthwhile to the songs.

Now, lots of people have taken, for example, Bob Dylan songs and created definitive versions (the Byrds' version of "Mr. Tambourine Man," Jimi Hendrix's psychedelic "All Along the Watchtower") that far surpass the originals. But when you're talking about the Beatles...man, those guys laid down the definitive version on record back in the 1960s. You can't improve on "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" or "All You Need is Love."

Unfortunately, that didn't stop Julie Taymor from trying. There are a few moments in the film that do work--the use of "Girl" to open the film was a nice touch and really established the main arc of the story--but most of the songs featured in the film were there because the title happened to fit (nevermind whether the actual content of the song had anything to do with the scene).

The moments that do work work well: the aforementioned opening scene with Jude sighing the song "Girl," a gorgeous scene and effective use of the tune "Dear Prudence" that actually manages to sound sweet and ephemeral, Eddie Izzard's suitably bizarre spoken-word rendition of "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!"--but most of these songs add no new dimensions to the original recordings. Sure, we've got a lot of young twenty-somethings with nice voices running these songs through their paces, but the arrangements have no real depth to them. For the most part, they rely on folky acoustic guitar, occasional touches of strings, and plenty of piano. Sure, the songs performed by Sadie and her band try to rock out in a Janis Joplin sort of way, but Sadie's voice really can't carry the whole Janis thing and the band seems to lack real muscle (and don't get me started on the "bluesy" solo version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" that Jojo does), something that tracks like "Oh! Darling" and "Helter Skelter" really need if you're going for the Janis Joplin angle.

And then there's Bono.

Don't get me wrong, I like U2 well enough. There's a time and a place for his '80s arena rock bombast, but "I am the Walrus" ain't it. Even the abhorrent Oasis version of the song is superior to Bono's take. The only thing worse than Bono singing in the film was Bono talking in the film, in large part because he adopted one of the worst American accents I have ever heard.

The real problem with Across the Universe is that Taymor seemed to think that just throwing in a bunch of Beatles songs, naming all the main and secondary characters after characters in Beatles songs, and slapping in some love story set in the midst of the Vietnam War is enough to make a compelling film. But the characters never gain any real depth. The main characters--Jude, Lucy, and her brother Max--get some development, but no real growth (Jude's big moment of insight appears to be that his "involvement" in something bigger than himself can come from singing "All You Need is Love" on a rooftop), and the secondary characters never get any development at all (poor Prudence comes and goes through the film for reasons that are never explained even a little bit).

The other issue with the film is that it can't decide what it wants to be. Part of it wants to be a serious musical that celebrates the Beatles' canon and tells a serious story about the difficult lives people had during the 1960s. The other part wants to be a surreal romp through counter-culture ethos, complete with drug trips, hallucinations, and Eddie Izzard setting up a circus in a tent six feet across. The movie tries to do to much, and it just can't bear the weight of its own conceits.

Ultimately, Across the Universe isn't a terrible film, but it is a fairly pointless one. Your life is not richer for having sat through the thing, and if you weren't already convinced of the greatness of the Beatles, it ain't gonna make you a convert. All it really did for me was make me put on the White Album on the ride home.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"