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Strawberry statement

Nothing exceeds like excess with Julie Taymor
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
November 28th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
All you need is love. Jim Sturgess plays Jude to Evan Rachel Wood's Lucy.
Across the Universe

Directed by Julie Taymor
With Jim Sturgess, Joe Anderson, Evan Rachel Wood, Dana Fuchs, Martin Luther McCoy, T.V. Carpio, Bono, Joe Cocker, Eddie Izzard and Salma Hayek

Greed, The Magnificent Ambersons, A Star is Born, A New Leaf. The story of Hollywood studios re-editing directors’ films is filled with artistic tragedies. So when word leaked out that director Julie Taymor was fighting against the cuts imposed upon her new film musical Across the Universe by Revolution Studio head Joe Roth, the natural response was to take Taymor’s side against the corporate philistines.
Surprisingly, in a rare victory for director’s cuts, Taymor won the day, and her film remains as she envisaged it. Having seen the result, however, one cannot help but have more sympathy for Roth, Revolution and Sony Pictures.
In a period where most of the films spread out on screens lack even a whiff of wit or taste, it seems strange to complain about a director’s richness. Yet, with Taymor, nothing exceeds like excess, and so one quickly feels surfeited not to mention exhausted by Across the Universe, as if it were a form of visual tryptophan.
Even if woefully over-egged, Across the Universe is often stunning and always inventive. The idea of creating a paen to the ’60s within a jukebox musical of Beatles’ songs is an inspired approach to the era, especially considering that the Fab Four had much to do with the decade’s tone, certainly its style. Taymor’s film, then, is history through a kaleidoscope eye.
The plot is a simple boy-meets-girl, when a young Liverpudlian shipwright, Jude (Jim Sturgess) comes to America and falls in love with a beautiful upper-middle-class girl, Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). As their names indicate, all of Taymor’s characters will serve as references to the people who populate the Beatle’s songs (Prudence, Jojo, Sadie, Mr. Kite), while simultaneously representing various aspects of ’60s culture.
Prudence (T.V. Carpio) is the classic sexually confused runaway, who heads to Manhattan to figure her life out. Jojo (Martin Luther McCoy) is a Detroit guitarist who becomes a stand-in for Jimi Hendrix. Sadie (powerhouse Dana Fuchs) is the boozeed-fueled earth mother with a voice like Janis Joplin.
It would be difficult to find any part of the ’60s left unexplored in Taymor’s film. Jude and Lucy’s relationship will frame the war in Vietnam, as well as the resulting protests. There is also the transition from beatnik cool to hippie hedonism, the Detroit riots following Martin Luther King’s assassination, the Summer of Love, the rise of drug culture accompanying the drop-out theories of Timothy Leary and the ultimate failure of the peace movement when it veers toward violence, particularly with the founding of the Weather Underground.
Still, all the giddy options of the time are here, all that wild hope in tie-dyed threads. This is mostly seen in Taymor’s salute to Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters in the person of Dr. Robert (Bono). In one of the film’s finest numbers, the cast pile onto the original art-car (Kesey’s psychedelic school bus, Furthur) and head into the countryside to “I am the Walrus.”
The scene, vibrant in the tampered-candy colors of Peter Max, folds into the striking “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” with Eddie Izzard playing the Mad Hatter as ringmaster of an animated homage to Yellow Submarine and Sgt. Pepper complete with Blue Meanies.
There are other fine moments: the longing in Carpio’s version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the fantastic take on “Come Together” performed by McCoy and the great Joe Cocker, who plays three different roles within the song. There is also Taymor’s pointed protest against the machinery of war, particularly with “I Want You” performed as a brutal ballet mechanique in an army induction center.
The cast is all first-rate, particularly Wood and Fuchs, and the film, with its nods to Hair, The Strawberry Statement and so many other works of the period, could have been, might have been a magnificent distillation of an age. Unfortunately, Taymor’s film cries out for its own distiller to capture the essence of its genius within its creator’s excesses. Perhaps one day we’ll be treated to the studio version.
Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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