Across The Universe (2007)

Across The Universe (2007)

Director: Julie Taymor
Writers: Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais
Genre: Drama/Musical/Romance

Story

There are a few stories being intermingled here, but the main one seems to be the love story between Lucy Carrigan (Evan Rachel Wood) and Jude (Jim Sturgess). Living in the time of the Vietnam War, the draft, and hippies completes this musical out as a strange love story with plenty of political views and upsets. Jude comes to America from Liverpool to find his father and ends up making some friends and meeting Lucy while he is there. They fall in love, but there is conflict and thy seemingly break up. The rest of the movie is the struggle they each have dealing without the strongest love they have ever know and both deciding they wanted to find each other again.


Everything Else

The directing of Across the Universe was fresh and compelling. Not your typical musical, although many of the musicals of the last couple decades have been going this sort of wild and bizarre route. The colors in the movie are tremendous and the camera flows from scene to scene with a very confident yet smooth transition. The movie reads like a string of music videos with the craziest scenes they could come up with.


The acting was superb with most of it being the singing, but the characters were also brought to life with the emotion of the dialogue not formed into a song. Evan Rachel Wood has been better, but carries her own and Jim Sturgess proves his talent in a lead role. The story felt original and kept my interest throughout the film by having many side stories going on at the same time. It almost seemed like there was too much going on, but the only story that really sucks you in is the love story between Jude and Lucy.

The songs were a perfect fit for the movie with all of the Beatles songs and psychedelic choreography. There was never a dull moment in Across the Universe and the scenery kept changing, making the film feel fresh throughout its entirety.


The Real Deal

I have lately been saying that I do not like musicals, but it seems the more and more I see the more I like them. I like the newer ones much better than the older ones because of the wild music video type style, but it is always interesting to see how the songs fit into or tell the story. Across the Universe told a coherent love story with almost nothing but music. I really enjoyed Across the Universe for its ability to make me forget about everything else going on in my life and just enjoy the show for a while. There wasn’t too much in the way of offensive material, but there were enough disturbing images to warrant the PG-13 rating. I would recommend this one even if you are not necessarily a fan of musicals.


The Short Version

Raw Score: 811,223
Sharon Movie? Yes

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