[Toronto] Across The Universe (*, 2007)
ANYONE WHO’S LIVED THE PAST FEW DECADES AND MOVED THROUGH PUBLIC SPACE has swum atop a sea of songs by Lennon and McCartney: so much so that their sounds, depending on the listener, have become either aural wallpaper or dreary irritant. That’s why it’s exciting when someone comes up with a cover like the one of The Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” used twice in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men: suddenly the craft of too-familiar yet stellar songwriting seems fresh once more. (Ubiquity is not the same as propinquity.) The same can’t be said by the grandiose folly of Julie Taymor’s third theatrical feature, Across The Universe, which mostly evokes a tiptoe by elephants working on the side as advertising copywriters but still trampling the Sony-owned Beatles songbook for which a cool $10 million was reportedly passed along for the rights to the songs, but not the original versions. Collaborating with screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais (Flushed Away, Vice Versa) Taymor goes in for the fatally twee affect of giving characters names like Prudence… Lucy… Maxwell… JoJo… Jude… Hey, Julie? It’s like a shout-out to your own cleverness. (Prudence? After a few reels’ absence, yes, she comes in through the bathroom window.) The late 1960s war-and-protest setting is enlivened largely by the intrusion of contemporary commentary and parallels, which bluntly suggests the folly of sending young generations to war will always be compounded by hidden faces. It’s elephantine whimsy with occasional inspired and quite beautiful images, such as when a splat of strawberry against a white wall becomes an acre of flaming napalm in a Southeast Asian jungle. But a moment on an Ohio football field where an Asian-American cheerleader in a golden uniform gazes longingly at her love while football players careen and pinwheel on the green turf behind her and she sings an a cappella version of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” to that other, female cheerleader, tears welled up from how poignant, how piercing that brief moment was. There’s also a sweet, strange gag, involving the passing of a roach in a frathouse which is invisible, but we hear a harmonica zing each time, then the final inhalee blows smoke: reportedly Taymor made the change to assuage the ratings board, digitally eliding the offending object. Nothing’s that consistent, however, but the inclusion of soldiers in tighty-whities bearing a Statue of Liberty on their shoulders while stomping as giants across a tiny palm-studded landscaped is typical of the bold visual gambits Taymor finds but for the life of her cannot integrate into anything more than second-rate vaudeville. The lead love story is between the damp Joe Anderson and frail, pale, lissome Evan Rachel Wood, who brings to mind images of her recent public snogs with Marilyn Manson. Bono, performing “I Am The Walrus,” and Eddie Izzard, as Mr. Kite, are merely insufferable; the SDS and terrorism elements less offensive than oddly unenlightening and an anti-Catholic-cum-dervish musical number is just jejune. All you need is rewrite… [Ray Pride.]
Oy, mate: “Ruby Tuesday” = Jagger/Richards…. [Clarification added above.]