I never need to see another movie ever again.
I have seen Across the Universe.
The best part of having to go and watch Spiderman was seeing the trailer for this movie. I did a double take, "Ewan McGregor, singing Beatles songs to me?" I thought. No, no. But almost as good. I vowed then that I had to see this movie, I had to see it in theatres, and nothing would stop me.
I just wish that I were 15, so I could truly appreciate this on the scale that it so desperately needs. It's like Moulin Rouge come again, and that movie has a special place nestled into my heart. Its not been usurped, though, because this nestles in an entirely different place. Magical Mystery Tour, perhaps, has been usurped.
When I said I never need to see another movie, I meant it. This fills the bill exactly for what I think film ought to do, but fails to do almost every time. Film has a chance to do things that theatre can't even dream of doing, and never tries. Theatre is always trying and never getting there. Julie Taymore has managed to do it. There are amazing, beautiful things in there that one would call special effects, except that they don't seem as such. They seem just perfectly right. The use of image is so so so so amazing. You could watch this with the sound down, well, perhaps not the sound, you could watch this with the soundtrack alone.
As a rule, I hate it when other people cover Beatles songs. It's just like when Madonna tried to cover American Pie, they miss the point and they get the contexts wrong and they just ruin the song. All of these were covers, all of them, but they were right. They'd come to a new song and I'd think, "Oh, they'll play this one," and sure enough, yes! There are only one or two places where things seem a little forced, and Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite is probably the worst (but even then, you're on for the ride at that point, so you don't care, and it's Eddie Izzard, so yeah), otherwise, it's just like in MR where the songs fall so into place you wonder that they weren't written just to be there. The Boy asked me how many of them were Beatles songs, because he didn't recognise about half of them. For the record, all of them. I'd have to see it again to tell you whether the incidental music is too, or if it's just a variation, or something, but, yes, all the songs and definitely two of the instrumentals are.
I was debating with myself whether they'd use some of the more peculiar stuff, my two big wonders were "Happiness is a Warm Gun" and "Why Don't We Do It In the Road". Oh yes, they're both in there. They even do both of George's hits, but the only credit Ringo gets (aside from the fact that he sang on "Help From My Friends" and they do that one) is that he's always credited for "Flying", which is that little instrumental from Magical Mystery Tour.
Truly, though, Beatles fans rejoice, because every other scene has an oblique reference in it. The green apple, and the bathroom window and the rooftop concert, and those are only the ones that bang out hit you on the head; there are others, little hints, the flowers in Lucy's parent's garden are the same as the ones from those pictures of the Beatles standing in a flower garden, post Sgt. Pepper. There are Blue Meanies.
I'm going to be able to watch this movie a hundred times before I squeeze everything out of it there is to get.
Even more than all that, this movie makes me want to do theatre, to capture some part of that amazing spectacle and put it on the stage, where it's real, not just passive on the screen. As it was, I wanted to be in a room of people who were alive and following along. It would've been even better to be in a room full of people who were singing and dancing and doing their own thing all the while, audience participation, something.
More than anything, it appeals to my sense of the oddly appropriate. It's not juxtaposition, though that's sometimes the term I use- it's like seeing a golf ball sitting in a kitchen drain and feeling that there is nothing strange about the golf ball being there.
Off kilter, perhaps? Surreal? Possibly surreal. We did a sort of intro to styles in a class last year, and everyone else complained that surrealism was hard, which boggled my mind, because I've always felt very at home with surrealism. That Magritte painting of the train coming out of the fireplace is one of my very favorites, because there's something so acknowledgedly strange about it, "Oh, yes," you think, "the train is coming out of the fireplace again. Funny that." It's strange, but it's a comfortable, right sort of strange. You appreciate that this is not the way of the world, but you don't mind this unusual quality. I look for that in people, too.
Across the Universe is exactly that, it's a familiar sort of strange, but it's also more than that. It's also a feeling of now, and a feeling of then, and a reality of neither. It was thrilling to watch.
Go see it. Go see it big. See it twice, remember it, because it just isn't going to be the same on a television screen.