Universe isn’t just twenty really good music videos. It’s the first movie since Alan Parker’s Pink Floyd’s The Wall that you could get really lit up on recreational drugs and see over and over again, this time leaving with a huge smile instead of a feeling of dread and defeat.
The musical interpretation of the Beatles catalog succeeds magnificently by not trying too hard, replacing any need to be too serious with sheer earnestness and enthusiasm. Evan Rachel Wood’s voice perfectly captures the early Beatle optimism of "It Won’t Be Long" and "Hold Me Tight", enacted in equal glory by swingers in both ruddy Liverpool and a white bread America about to rocked to its core by a decade of grasped freedom, and the reverberated backlash of violence and control of a political system with a cold war to fight.
Nobody escaped from the hell of Viet Nam and the aftermath of the search for numbing escape of “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” as quickly as they do here, but Taymor knows that the true glory of the ‘60s wasn’t any short term political victory, but the uncompromising simplicity of John Lennon’s paean to the best that humanity had to offer, “All You Need is Love.” Lennon’s vision hasn’t conquered the world’s hatred, competitive insanity, and crippling fear, but as long as you pass it on to your children, it needn’t have to die either. Now with Across the Universe, they’ll have something full of stunning, bright, impressionistic beauty to look at while you do.
Article comments