Who can listen to "A Hard Day's Night" without picturing the four moptops being chased through the streets of London, or hear "Yellow Submarine" without flashing to the Blue Meanies? The songs of the Beatles have such a rich cinematic history that, after all these years, it feels strange to build new associations. But with Across the Universe, director Julie Taymor does just that, stamping familiar tunes with indelible images that are nothing short of breathtaking.
Across the Universe imagines a fantasy America in which Beatles songs emerged fully formed, written not by Lennon and McCartney but by the chaotic energy of the 1960s. "Let it Be," for example, becomes the prayer of a child caught in the Detroit riots; "I Am the Walrus" is the psycho-babble of a Timothy Leary-esque guru; "I Want to Hold Your Hand" expresses pre-Stonewall lesbian longing. The film begins as an effectively traditional movie musical, full of love songs and group choreography. For a while, it looks like Taymor is letting the genre constrain her imagination (as she did in the paint-by-numbers biopic Frida, with its all-too-fleeting moments of magical realism). Then suddenly, we realize she's been holding back on purpose, better to show us the buttoned-down early '60s before all hell broke loose. The turning point is a nightmarish rendition of "I Want You," chanted by animated Uncle Sam posters in a recruitment office. The song gets more surreal from there — metal cubicles descend from the sky, army recruiters dance in ghoulish masks — until it becomes "She's So Heavy," sung by the new recruits as they carry a Statue of Liberty through the fields of Vietnam. It's a daring, high-concept, unforgettable sequence, and it's hard to imagine another director who could pull it off. For a while afterward, Across the Universe abandons its sparse narrative threads and floats into drug-inspired euphoria. The sketchily drawn characters (Jude, Lucy, Prudence, Sadie and so forth) have a long strange trip, then come crashing down into the harsh realities of war, capitalism and substance abuse. It's here that the film's metaphoric conceit starts to falter: rather than mirroring the slow the decline of the sixties, the characters practically fall off a cliff into 1975. But even as the decade (and by extension, the film) becomes a drag, the songs continue to ring true.
While Across the Universe may prove too bizarre for a mainstream audience, it establishes Julie Taymor as the most cinematically daring, conceptually inventive director since Terry Gilliam. Spending a few hours in Taymor's world actually makes you see your own differently — it's like hearing your favorite song again for the first time. — Gwynne Watkins