Toronto: 'Across the Universe'

Where to begin?

The gaggle of critics I emerged with from Sunday afternoon’s screening of Across the Universe were so giddy that anyone who saw us on the street would have thought we were coming from a nitrous oxide party. Director Julie Taymor’s gargantuan all-Beatles-songs musical is that rarest of animals, the perfect disaster that fulfills expectations by defying them. Just when you think it can’t possibly get more literal, more kitsch-infused, more mortifyingly soft-headed, it does. “It’s like watching ‘Sesame Street,’” one of my number commented, and he wasn’t just talking about the colors.

Across the Universe takes place in a ‘60s England and America in which there are no Beatles, only Beatles songs. Jude, a Liverpool dockworker, jumps off a steamer in America to find his father; at Princeton, he meets up with happy-go-lucky soon-to-be-dropout Max and his ethereally beautiful sister Lucy. Max and Jude run off to Experience Life in New York City, where they rent a room from a sexy R&B singer named Sadie. Soon black axeman Jojo drops in—not, as you’d expect, from Tucson Arizona but Detroit—as does Ohio-born lesbian Prudence. Who, at one point, lovesick over Sadie, hides in a closet. And has to be coaxed out. With a song. Can you guess what it is?

Seriously. At one point Lucy chides Jude over a certain lack of social commitment. “There’s a revolution going on out there!” she exclaims. (Alas, she does not note that it’s the ninth one.) What do you think he responds with? And what do you think Jojo’s guitar does after news of Martin Luther King’s assassination comes over the airwaves? What item does Jude fixate on when he looks into a bowl of fruit?

After a while one can’t help but join in the movie’s game. “I wonder if there’ll be a character who’s sleep-deprived?” “Will anybody need to use a phone book in this movie?” (No, and no, as it turns out. Also, though Sadie does in fact commit an act of betrayal here, she doesn’t get her song. Similarly, while Max is at one point seen brandishing a hammer, he doesn’t get his, either. Maybe they’ll be on the DVD.) “What would a musical of Rolling Stones songs be about?” But this theme is merely one part of the astonishing panorama. The businessmen with briefcases sync-stepping in the middle of 6th Avenue. The vast variety of papier-mache heads. The Mummenschanz redolence. The Peter Max redolence. The nerve of staging one musical number in a bowling alley, after The Big Lebowski both opened and closed that book for good. What were they thinking?” we ask. And we can never truly know. We can only come back, again and again, to the bizarre wonderment…

Oh, I’m sorry, I’m drifting off. I should note that Evan Rachel Wood, who plays Lucy, turns out to have a better singing voice than her boyfriend. And I should also congratulate Ambrose Martos, who has a small part in this movie as an associate of Timothy Leary-esque acid guru Doctor….wait for it…Robert. (Who’s played by Bono, who really must think Taymor’s a genius, as he allows her to make him up so he looks like Robin Williams.) Ambrose was a freelance factchecker for Premiere back in the day. Once certain of the staff learned that he had graduated clown college, we took to throwing galleys on random desks and irately demanding the name of “the clown who fact-checked this.” Ambrose tolerated this with great good humor has subsequently gone on to quite a bit of Off-Broadway success with his antics (I believe he did a stint in Slava’s Snow Show.) It was a kick to see him here.

Comments

[Marshall]

I hope the only entrances in this movie are bathroom windows.

[Ray]

Come to think of it, Bono does kind of look like Robin Williams. In a younger, more Irishy kind of way.

[gigi]

Anyone who saw this movie should proceed directly here
http://boxofficekarma.net/

[Justine]

if you don't know the beatles this movie is really magic
of course you expect "hey jude", "dear prudence" ...but is it so bad ?
you don't like this movie because you exepected something else that's all, if you just want to a see a good musical it's perfect.

(i'm french my english is not good)
et bonne journée

[Julia]

totally best movie ever