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Liberated? Well, I dunno…though the not-making-sense part seems about right. But this isn’t a slag, it’s an appreciation. Because from one extravagant setup to the next, there’s hardly a frame in Taymor‘s Across the Universe that doesn’t do more than it reasonably ought to—or ever would have in the hands of anyone less attentively committed. It’s a film that never stops working, at a tightrope level of awareness, even when what it’s working at—a musical tale of “peace and love” in the shadow of Vietnam, as refracted through the prism of 60s Beatles lyrics—is certifiably brain-dead.
So yeah, I mostly enjoyed the thing. Like an evening with the old Boston Pops Orchestra under Arthur Fiedler’s baton, those brass and string textures caressing every popcorn strain of “Roll Out the Barrel” as if it were Beethoven or Mozart. Or legions of Cirque du Soleil performers—jongleurs and tumblers and animal handlers, maybe a dancing bear or two—as technically marvelous as they are “intellectually” undernourished, like a succession of stupid pet tricks that everyone can applaud. Isn’t there a place for that in our lives, for craft without a brain? So close your eyes and think of Cats—oh god, no! … but you get the idea.
