Give director Julie Taymor credit for one thing, she’s certainly not afraid to take risks. From adapting The Lion King to the Broadway stage to exploding Shakespeare with brutal eloquence in Titus to bring a bit of surrealistic puppet magic to her biopic Frida the woman doesn’t take the easy way out. She has a vision and by golly she is going to stick to it and if you’re not a fan that’s quite all right with her.

Evan Rachel Wood and John Sturgess prove all you need is love in Revolution Studios' Across the Universe

Across the Universe might just be her most audacious experiment yet. A turbulent counter-culture love story musical set in the 1960’s and told through the usage of a good portion of iconic British band The Beatles’ classic songbook, the film is hands-down one of the most daringly original films released in this year. It is different, daring and almost impossible to take your eyes off of.

It’s also a total mess continually undermined by hackneyed script by Dick Clement (Flushed Away) and Ian La Frenais (The Commitments), the whole thing flying of the rails so many times after a while sort of lost track. The picture crams so much material into so short a time frame (even if at 131 minutes its actually a bit long) and with so little of substance to latch it all on to it can’t help but fall apart in a blaze of psychedelic glory.

But what a rush much of it is! Pieces of it are beyond magic, the phantasmagoria crafted by Taymor and her talented team of filmmakers is virtually beyond reproach. The Walrus and the Eggmen are wandering all over this thing in spades (and I’m not just talking about Bono and Eddie Izzard), some of the sights, sounds and sensory cocktails the director explodes across the screen so hallucinatory they pretty much qualify for a revolution pretty much all by themselves (and that’s definitely all right by me).

Yet this fusion of Beatles’ pop music and popular history doesn’t mesh. For everything Taymor and company get right like our heroine Lucy’s mournful rendition of “Black Bird” (sung with quiet authority by star Evan Rachel Wood) there are countless moments where things aren’t just wrong, they’re spectacularly so. Most notable amongst those is the staging of the Detroit riots set to elegiac heights of the band’s “Let it Be.” The Whole sequence isn’t just awful, it’s inconceivably so, and by the time the picture finally decides to move on it has so completely blown itself to pieces trying to take it seriously once again is just about a forgone impossibility.

There have been rumors and innuendos flying over this picture and its troubles for months, but as I don’t know near enough of that story to really have a good opinion on the matter I can’t say how all of this strife has affected the picture one way or the other. What I can say is that Taymor’s insistence to adhere to her singular vision no matter what is both a thing worthy of applause just as it is a prime factor in this musical’s ultimate disappointment. It is clear the images in her head called to her so strongly she didn’t take the time to fashion a story worthy of all the effort, this tale of love, death, happiness and war never creating a solid enough story arc to keep me completely fascinated.

And yet, I find myself thinking I’m going to have a terrifically difficult time getting this one out of my head. While this whole thing is more than a bit helter skelter (and that’s an understatement), while my pen gently weeps writing this part of me is overjoyed there are filmmakers out there as gifted and as daring as Taymor willing to take chances so impudently adventures such as this.  

In the end, while The Beatles told as all you need is love, a movie needs more than that to find success. Across the Universe doesn’t quite get there, not by a long shot, but it does try to do something different, and in a Hollywood world were different is bad and homogenized mediocrity is the status quo that’s certainly a thing I can give, if not all, at least a piece of my loving to six days a week and then some.

Film Rating:  êê1/2  (out of 4)

Additonal Links

-  Across the Universe Theatrical Trailer