ctiptonk

Let me begin by saying that this film is brave, timely and poignant and I love it to pieces. However, I concur with the other reviewers who have had slightly mixed feelings. The key to producing good musicals, especially now that the art form's pinnacle of popularity in the golden studio era of the 50s is an entire half-century past, is to maintain the audience's suspension of disbelief. In that respect, Across the Universe is exceedingly clever, transitioning with choreographed precision between what one might call diagetic and nondiagetic moments- "real" scenes and dance numbers. For example, football players careening and colliding in front and behind the protagonist of the moment gracefully transpose into dancers, flipping and tumbling yet still retaining a style of movement consistent with the football theme.

The visual style of the film echos the innocence of Hairspray in earlier moments, and the colorful melodrama of Moulin Rouge in its representation of the Beatles' later more political work, as the politics of the film begin to cement. Smart editing in the opening sequence creates graphic matches, carefully balancing newspapers atop crashing waves. An army boot camp montage splits individual body parts into separate boxes, suggesting the dehumanization by fragmentation (Full Metal Jacket?) that takes place to create soldiers. Strawberries are grenades, bombs, bloody masses sacrificed to the war on terror --strike that-- the war against Communism. Yet in some scenes, all the visual trickery loses its place, and doesn't quite live up to our expectations of sensory overload— the circus scene somehow seems too thin and too out of context for its own intentions.

The film contains some of the most innovative set, lighting and costume designs I've ever seen- Max's abduction into the military comes to mind. Floors slide unexpectedly, hospital beds flip with Busby Berkeley precision. Soldiers march over a scale-model of Vietnamese jungle carrying a heavy Statue of Liberty. Many pieces surpass Dream Girls in their ambition and pure bravado. The budget, clearly many multiples larger than Hairspray's, lends itself well to the rendition of the Beatles' music, and the action is indeed impeccably matched to the visuals and emotional pitch of the plot. There's even some surprising re-casting of songs to suggest alternates to literal readings, ie "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" about loneliness.

But there are exceptions- the bowling alley scene falls particularly flat, as does an elating but contrived vision of "Dear Prudence" (could that effect be any more cliché?). The plot also occasionally hits a rough patch, failing to sufficiently motivate Jude's animosity towards Lucy, and skipping awkwardly around the issues surrounding Prudence (is she Vietnamese? Were the filmmakers timid about offending the audience by exploring her sexuality in a less roundabout, under-the-radar kind of way?) and Jude's father. The emotional weight of the film takes longer to develop than it should, leaving audiences to spend the first 20 minutes wondering if they'll care about the characters or not.

Despite these quirks, Across the Universe is the kind of film I have been waiting with bated breath for a brave filmmaker to take on. Its characters are not literally the Beatles or Janis Joplin, nor the actual characters described in the Beatles' music, they are in effect *metacharacters*- stand ins for ideas, people who embody the ethos of a generation, and by proxy, a suggestion on the direction of our own. The film repoliticizes and recontexualizes the Beatles' music for a new generation, allowing us to understand both the original context of the work, and its pointed applicability now. Comparable to Apocalypse Now in its timely, subtle and yet provocative objection to a war without end, Across The Universe asks a new generation to take up the struggle passed to it by their spiritual predecessors. It is a brave and elegant statement, despite its quirks and oversights, well deserving of a wide and receptive audience.

** contains spoilers **

I was severely disappointed in Ron Howard's ho-hum interpretation of the excellent novel. I was hoping that the initial reviews had been wrong, and I would at least enjoy seeing all the puzzles visually presented, but I was let down. Then again, I can't really say I was expecting much, as I had assumed that it would be terrifyingly difficult to creatively transpose the lengthy passages of historical background and character development neatly into cinematic form. Oh, they did try— for 2.5 hours— but somehow even with the long run time, I never sympathized with the characters as I did with the novel. Furthermore, the length made a mess of the pacing, which occasionally lurched forward whenever Silas appeared (people in the audience even screamed) and then slogged for so long it was easy to forget the protagonists were running for their lives. I always had the sense in the book that danger was just around the corner, but the film version completely misses this suspense.

Tom Hanks, bless his heart, plays a truly realistic university professor... but the "I'm a nerdy guy just caught up in things I don't understand" shtick is completely wrong and overplayed for this context. Audrey makes a lovely Sophie, but much of her charm seems to have been dialogue- and accent- coached away. The character development is further short-circuited by Howard's decision to use odd semi-flashback scenes which reduce the rich stories of these characters to a few CG'd up flashes. One hideous example of poor directing choices comes when Remy is talking with the Teacher and we're not supposed to know the identity of the Teacher- this is easy to handle in literature, and admittedly difficult to render in cinema, but the sheer awkwardness of the camera movements and the gross transparency of the intentionally one-sided duologue is a missed opportunity for innovation.

Speaking of missed opportunities, let's talk about the art design... could the set of the final revelation have been any worse? A secret latch under a rug in the shape of a painfully obvious symbol? Come on! This completely misses the clever ingenuity of Dan Brown's puzzles. Although exhaustive time is spent on exposition, little is spent on the actual puzzle solving, making each revelation seem inevitable and contrived instead of suspenseful and intellectually exciting. If the medium had been leveraged more effectively, Howard could have given us a much better visual representation of the symbols in the text, but again, the opportunity is wasted, especially in the scene in which Teabing (sic) explains the meaning of the grail. Where was all the CG wizardry here? Even the painting represented on the big LCD screen is so grainy and washed out it loses the purpose of writing a story that utilizes the weight and genius of DaVinci's art.

With such dramatic locations, I don't see how this was screwed up so badly. Perhaps it was because I was stuck sitting waaay up front, but I noticed a *lot* of out of focus shots, and it wasn't just the projector, because the next shot would be fine. Someone needs to wake up the focus puller and get them to do their job!

**bad spoiler!!!**

The worst part about the film adaptation is the dumbing down of the material to make it less controversial. In the book, Sophie has a falling out with her grandfather because she sees him in a sexual ritual. In the movie, this is ever-so-briefly hinted at. This is a major omission because a) it motivates most of Sophie's actions and is a source of tension until the trust is formed between her and Langdon b) it contains one of the book's most accurate and damning jabs at misogynistic church doctrine. This was done almost certainly to ensure the film would get a PG-13 and not an R rating... opting for studio bottom line over artistic expression. Finally, I hardly see the justification of all the protests etc... when the film ends on such a dogmatic, pro-Christian note. Hanks' last lines were so horribly forced and so Hollywood "you thought this was going to be controversial? Just kidding! We were on the side of hegemony all along!"