Movie Review: Across the Universe

Has it ever happened to you that certain things just keep crossing your path, as if the universe is trying to tell you something?

Every so often I have this experience and had it again recently with the movie Across the Universe (2007). It started a while back already and many of the serendipitous events I cannot recall now. However, let me share a recent chain of events. A week ago I listened to Porcupine Tree's song, "Epidemic". This reminded me very much of Greenday's "Wake Me Up When September Ends". (I posted on this last week.) On YouTube I went to see Greenday's music video of "Wake Me Up When September Ends". The video tells the story of a young couple in love. The video takes a serious turn when the young man enlists in the army, apparently to ensure their future, but to the frantic distress of his lover. Evan Rachel Wood, the girl in this video, also plays the leading actress in Across the Universe. Something similar happened so that I listened to Evan Rachel Wood's beautiful renditions of "It Won't Be Long" and "Blackbird" both songs from the soundtrack of the motion picture. Make sure to listen to Wood's "Blackbird"! It caused me to go searching for the soundtrack of Across the Universe and after listening to it for I week I decided that I better see this movie.

So I did last night. I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a musical. And a beautiful one at that. The movie is set mostly in America during the tumultuous 1960's and tells the tale of love and war. Protests against America's engagement in the Vietnam War is a major motif in the film. By inference, the film can possibly be interpreted as protest against the current Iraqi War.

Similar to the Beatles music, the movie is uncluttered. The scenes are skillfully constructed with rich moods and always aesthetically pleasing compositions. The visual elements seem to have been put on the canvas with economic brush strokes. The interpretations of the Beatle songs are lovely to listen to. They keep the neat melodious feel of the originals, but new flavours are brought to the old songs. Also, the script is well constructed.

In the study of Creative Writing it is often better for the writer to say less, to leave some gaps in the plot. This is contrary to what one would expect, for isn't the mark of a good writer his or her ability to describe in detail? Actually, too much detail can in fact hinder the engagement of the reader to the text. If everything is said, then the reader has nothing to imagine. It is therefore sometimes better to leave certain things unsaid, so that the reader's brain can fill the missing links and so be more actively involved in the text. The script to Across the Universe does this. Subtle plot pieces are strategically left out, keeping the viewer engaged, often relying on the lyrics to give hints towards the missing pieces. Since the plot flows mostly chronologically the viewer is never lost that filling-the-gaps happens subconsciously, so that the viewer hardly notices the jumps in the narrative.

The transition into the surrealist landscape of the musical is also a progressive one, so that the viewer is slowly taken up into the musical fantasy world – so gradual is the transition that one nearly forgets towards the end of the movie that such things cannot happen in real life.

Although over two hours in length, Across the Universe is the type of musical one can watch over and over again. It watches like a music video, weaved together with a thin thread of blood and love. It is a beautiful story and afterward I felt a warm glow as if I heard the gospel again. While Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly ends with a quasi-sermon on "God is Love", Across the Universe never preaches, but I heard the message: "Love is God".

The movie also brags with an ensemble of cameos, such as Bono and Salma Hayek.



A little more on Evan Rachel Wood: She had a relationship with Marylin Manson and inspired the song "Heart-Shaped Glasses" [Listen here or download here] on his Eat Me, Drink Me-album. She has a black belt in Taekwon-Do (which is probably why I like her so much!). She signed a deal with a record label for her debut album which I look forward to listen to.