Screen Scene: “Across the Universe”

In the beginning of “Across the Universe,” Jude, played by Jim Sturgess, sits alone on a wide beach, looks straight at the audience and sings the first few lines of “Girl.”

His voice is full of sorrow and his dark puppy eyes pop out against his pale English skin and it is clear the song means something to him. He really seems desperately in love. One would imagine that the story behind such a heartfelt tune would be good enough to justify the emotion, and “Across the Universe” starts off promising.

The girl Jude sings for, we find soon find out, is Lucy, an upper-middle-class American schoolgirl played by Evan Rachel Wood. We first meet Lucy when she and Jude, a working class lad from Liverpool, still on opposite sides of the Atlantic, each sing the jubilant “Hold Me Tight.” Lucy serenades her handsome soldier boyfriend and Jude his pretty, shorthaired, party-girlfriend. Sturgess and Wood execute the choreography with such enthusiasm, it doesn’t seem the least bit cheesy. Their voices, too, are pitch perfect, and it does not seem strange but rather refreshing to hear the songs done in voices other than Lennon and McCartney.

Director Julie Taymor, who won a Tony award in 1998 for her direction of the elaborate and remarkable Broadway musical “The Lion King,” takes advantage of the film medium and uses the camera to enhance the impact of a song and dance number ““ if the film could only stay this spectacular.

But alas, like the 1960s, in “Across the Universe,” bop-shoo-bop bubblegum joy gives way to enraged violence, experimental drugs, and an overall feeling of disorder. This transition occurs in the film when the story abandons its endearing characters for general tales of ’60s woes and ideals.

The couple gets together rather early in the film. They meet when Jude sails over to America to search for his dad and his own true self. Lucy and Jude come from different worlds, but they soon find common ground in the New York hippie scene.

And once Jude and Lucy have assembled enough musical friends in New York, including Sadie, a free-spirited, sexy rocker, Prudence, a young lesbian, and JoJo, a black guitarist, the movie quits developing the characters and starts telling the complete history of the 1960s, unabridged. The emotions expressed through songs become more universal, less personal, and the middle starts feeling like an extended YouTube Beatles fan video, with a bunch of Beatles songs emoting over psychedelic ’60s drug tripping, Vietnam War battles, war protests, race riots, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Basically, if it happened in the ’60s, it’s in the movie ““ and there’s a Beatles song to capture the spirit.

While feelings expressed in mere words may lack the complex layers of those set to a tune, they can be more direct, and they sure take less time. A simple “I’m angry because …” would have been far more beautiful than a dance-fight rendition of “Revolution.” The film got to the point that whenever the cast broke into a song, I silently hoped they would not sing its entirety, for brevity’s sake.

And too often at the end of such musical routines, it was unclear what the song was supposed to mean, or how it was supposed to relate to the story. Songs were decoration and often were inadequate substitutes for narration.

Even when they stall the plot, the selected Beatles songs are pleasant to hear on their own, but that’s what iPods are for. “Across the Universe” is by no means unenjoyable ““ the first 30 minutes or so is truly brilliant on-screen entertainment. But abandoning a compelling plot to make another anti-war statement (a sentiment made very clear by robotic soldiers and posters of Uncle Sam singing “I Want You”) just kills the fun.

All this film needs is love. And fewer hippies.

““ Amy Crocker

E-mail Crocker at acrocker@media.ucla.edu.

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