Topic: Across the Universe

Across the Universe: ‘Hair’ meets ‘Rent’ in a rock musical for the 21st century

By Christine Anne Piesyk | November 1, 2007 |

Once in a great while a movie comes along, a film that is perfection, a film that is a coalescing of sight, sound, story, imagination, message, heart and history that warrants a slot on the best movies of the year list. For Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe, that title may be extended to my list of best films of this decade.

Across the Universe is a vibrant collision of modern rock musical (as in Rent) and vintage rock musical (as in Hair), Broadway hits turned feature films, with song as the dominant method of moving the story forward. Across the Universe does that brilliantly.

Across the Universe is tatamount to time travel for us baby boomers. It begins sweetly, siftly, sentimentally, with a lonely youth, sitting on the shore in England, singing the wistful lyrics to Girl and looking out over the waves. yet there’s a hint of things to come, images superimposed with a suddenly wild surf, images of dissent and violence and anti-war sentiment that erupted in the 60s.

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