Across The Universe — Musical Review

Ivano Milo
Jul 28, 2017 · 3 min read

Across the Universe is a musical from 2007 directed by Julie Taymor. It follows the story of Jude as he travels from Liverpool to Princeton University to find his father, who he never knew. Jude ends up falling for Lucy, the sister of his new friend Max, who Jude meets at Princeton while looking for his father. Max ends up dropping out of school and moves to New York with Jude to live with Sadie, a local musician. Lucy visits Max in New York when her boyfriend is killed in action in the Vietnam War. Jude and Lucy pursue a relationship together, while Jude pursues a career in art while Lucy pursues social activism against the war. Max gets drafted, Lucy’s movement’s leader makes advances on her, and is later found to be making bombs. Jude is deported back to England. A slip up causes the office of Lucy’s movement to explode. Word gets out and Jude arranges to come back to America to check up on that situation. Sadie ends up playing a rooftop concert in New York and becoming successful as a musician. Everything ends very happily in the musical.

The film uses the music of the Beatles as its soundtrack and musical numbers. These songs are used to further the narrative of the film and give insight to some of the actions of the plot. The Beatles catalogue is completely reimagined compositionally for this film. For instance, “Let it Be” is reimagined as a Gospel hymn about the Civil Rights Movement, and “I Want To Hold Your Hand” is reimagined as a ballad about being a closeted homosexual. The songs are mostly words and music, and there aren’t too many instrumental reworkings of the original songs.

There are ensembles all over the place, notably during the performance of “Dear Prudence,” in which Jude and Max sing to Prudence together to get her to come out of the closet she’s locked herself in. There is another duet between Sadie and her lover/guitarist JoJo, over the song “Oh Darling,” which uses the structure of the duet to tell the story of how they are not doing well in their relationship, and JoJo actually walks out on her during this performance.

The scene that surrounds “With a Little Help From My Friends” is about showing Jude the house where Max and his friends live. The point is to show that they all have each others backs. The action is very humorous. It starts off with Max telling Jude that he’s about to show him how they do things. They walk into the house and grab beers, with only Max singing at first. He distributes the beers among his friends. They go out to a bar and see the usual patrons, play some pool, and then go to the rooftop of a building to play some golf. There is some choreography that is kind of wild. Max, Jude, and his friends run around campus for a bit and crash at the end.

The music itself uses a type of call and response, with Max singing a line, and the friend group asking him a relevant question all together. The tempo is fast. It starts off with just a guitar, with some harmonica coming in, adding little accents and harmonies behind the vocals. It seems to be a major-keyed song. The chorus is sung by all of the friends. There is some higher harmony on these parts. There is a part where the waiter asks “do you need anybody?” and Max responds “I need somebody to love.” This question-answer structure happens throughout the rest of the song. There are syncopated drums in the background near the end, with a big drum fill leading into the final chorus which is huge sounding.

I really liked Across the Universe. It was emotionally satisfying, deep but fun at times. The music really told most of the story and did an excellent job of it. I saw no way to improve this work.

References:

“Across the Universe (film).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 24 July 2017. Web. 28 July 2017.

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