Hear Me Out: Across the Universe

In the years since it bombed badly at the box office, Across the Universe has found its cult following (a Cinespia screening at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery this summer was attended in the thousands, according to IndieWire.) Yet the film has never fully gotten its due–Roger Ebert loved it, for the record. Mamma Mia, the ABBA jukebox musical starring Meryl Streep, was built on joyful, romantic silliness and was successful enough to warrant a sequel more than 10 years later. Its Beatles counterpart is plenty silly at times, often achingly romantic, with a soundtrack of songs just as beloved as ABBA’s, if not moreso. But Across The Universe also features race riots, political unrest and the Vietnam War. It’s not exactly hard to digest, but it’s not light fare, either. It’s a whole decade smushed into one movie, and the miracle is how well Taymor was able to pull it off.

One of the movie’s most impressive tricks is the way the plot mirrors the Beatles’ musical evolution throughout the 1960s. With a few exceptions, the soundtrack progresses chronologically through the band’s discography, demonstrating how the group was the decade’s greatest reflection for the cultural (or counter-cultural) revolution. The film follows Jude (Jim Sturgess), a young man from Liverpool who seeks his absent father in the U.S. and instead finds an unexpected family in Max (Joe Anderson) and their eventual Greenwich Village roommates Sadie (Dana Fuchs), Jo-Jo (Martin Luther McCoy) and Prudence (T.V. Caprio). When Jude falls in love with Max’s sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), it’s all innocent early-Beatles love songs (“I’ve Just Seen A Face,” “If I Fell”). As time goes on, relationships deepen, and the gang gets introduced to drugs, the music becomes more complicated—as it did for the Beatles themselves (“I Am The Walrus,” “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite”). Max is drafted, Jude and Lucy retreat into art and activism, and the music reflects the frustration and melancholy of the moment (“Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Happiness Is A Warm Gun”). Across the Universe ends with the hard-won hopefulness that “All You Need Is Love,” performed on a rooftop in tribute to the Beatles’ own last performance. It’s the entire emotional arc of a career and an era in less than two and a half hours.

Critics dinged Across the Universe for a thin plot, but that’s the trick of a musical; it has to bring us on that emotional journey less through dialogue than lyrics. There’s no mistaking how Jude is feeling when he beams through “I’ve Just Seen A Face” or sneers through “Revolution.” Lucy’s journey to radicalization from perfect suburban schoolgirl to anti-war activist is perfectly easy to track after her high school sweetheart dies in Vietnam and her brother is subsequently drafted. The interpretations of some tracks are at times incredibly literal—an Uncle Sam poster coming to life to declare “I Want You” when Max shows up for his draft summons, for instance, or the friends encouraging the secretly lesbian Prudence to “come out and play” when she locks herself in a closet. It can be a little goofy, sure, but it’s a musical! They’re a little goofy sometimes!

What sets the movie apart is Taymor’s singular vision. Those hyper-literal interpretations of the songs are set to inventive visuals, like the boxy, eerie soldiers putting the drafted recruits through their paces in precise choreography, or the dreaminess of “Dear Prudence” bleeding into the larger-than-life puppetry at a peaceful protest. Her more surreal ideas come vividly to life in the strangeness of sequences like “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite” and “Happiness Is A Warm Gun.” But she also knows when to pull back and let a performance shine on its own, as in “Something” or “Blackbird.” That balance (on top of able performances from the entire cast) saves the film from teetering into utter ridiculousness while also preventing the thing from taking itself too seriously. The Beatles’ work, even the darker stuff, always had a sense of humor. It only makes sense for their jukebox musical to have that, too.

Your mileage may vary with Taymor’s style (those puppets have been working for her since The Lion King), but her signature is inextricable from the film, for better or worse. In a world where movie musicals are a dying art and the biggest blockbusters tend to all look monotonously the same, Across the Universe’s color and scale and daring are a breath of fresh air. It’s cool that this movie jammed so many ideas into one story. It’s cool that they got Joe Cocker and Bono involved. It’s cool that Taymor fought for her vision and her version of the film against the studio’s resistance. It may be occasionally cheesy, but at least it’s interesting! It feels like fewer films these days can say the same.

Across the Universe was a big swing and, by box office standards, a big miss. But at least Taymor was swinging, and the effort and craft is evident in the final product. It’s as easy to fall in love with Across the Universe as it was for Jude to fall for Lucy during their very first meeting. If you can surrender to its weirdness and whimsy, the movie has so much to offer. Big, bold, beautiful movie musicals don’t come along that often anymore. We need to cherish and champion the ones that make it through, against all odds. Like the Beatles said, it’s easy. All you need is…

Mary Kate Carr is a staff writer for The A.V. Club. Follow her on Twitter/X for more impassioned takes on maligned romances.