Flickgrrl

I think "X the U" is the kind of forward-thinking film that won't be fully appreciated until 10 or 20 years from now. I love that way Taymor experiments all over the place and her passion for the medium is palpable which can be intimidating to moviegoers accustomed only to the formulaic. (Taymor achives what Baz Luhrmann attempted in "Moulin Rouge" but without making her take on the movie musical seem like an abberation.) The way the filmmaker breaks out of boundaries makes "X the U" an acquired taste right now, but I think it will grow and flourish as the years pass.

It's nice to see members of the critical community sticking up for this movie. I read a lot of negative reports out of Toronto, but have greatly anticipated it for some time nevertheless. Many journalistic critics seem to tear down visual and auditory ambition with glee, as Anne Thompson recently pointed out. But the cinematic medium is about the possibility of feeling and thought brought on by the marriage of image and sound.

I should note that I haven't seen the movie yet, but I hopefully will very soon. But I love the way you phrased your closing thoughts, Carrie. You point out a major problem in a great deal of journalistic criticism, and that is the great emphasis placed on content rather than form. But I believe we need to stop focusing on plot, narrative, character, and structure and begin an inquiry into cinema by first observing the images and sounds themselves. That is cinema. When it comes to cinema, form is content. I can't help but want to quote the great Marshall McLuhan in reminding critics that "the medium is the message."

Glad to see that there are those willing to buck the trend and appreciate what Julie Taymor is attempting in ACROSS THE UNIVERSE. However, i wanted to add that, in New York City at least, another musical movie by a woman writer-director just opened: Tata Amaral's ANTONIA. This Brazilian movie might be termed a neo-realist musical, as it takes the story of four girls from the slums who form a musical group and try to find a record deal, and makes this a quintessential neo-realist tale of hope amidst squalor. The music (which is almost nonstop) is just exhilarating.

But these movies (plus ONCE and COLMA) show that there are artists still willing to use music in movies in imaginative ways, and that the old standard movie-musical approach (as seen in DREAMGIRLS) isn't the only answer. So no matter what, the movie musical is being reinvented, revived, and restored.

(And just for the record, if a movie musical is a movie in which music becomes the major narrative and thematic vehicle, then two of my favorite musicals of all time have to be the Straub-Huillet CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH and Marguerite Duras's INDIA SONG.)

I went to this movie with my wife on Friday.

I am a huge Beatles fan, and I was a little nervous about the film's cover of the songs before we arrived.

As the movie began, I was feeling the "Corny-O'-Meter" ringing in, but I decided to keep an open mind for at least 15 minutes. I'm glad I did, because once I got used to the stylistic and creative discourse of the movie, I really enjoyed every moment. Typically, I'm someone who comes out of a movie loving it, but after having a couple of days to let the film digest, will realize the fatal flaws. This film, however, has resonated with me since I left theater, and I highly recommend it.

Daryl and Chris: So glad that others are responding "X the U." Daryl: If "The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach" is a musical, and I would concede that it is musical but not "a" musical, then is "A Clockwork Orange" count as a Beethoven songfest?

I went with my daughter and loved this film...I loved how she incorporated the songs, the colors, crazy characters...amazing...the comments coming out of the theater of mostly teenagers was praise...I think this movie will be seen again and again...Great movie...

Wow! How I loved everything about this movie. It is one of my favorite movies ever and I have been a Beatle fan since 1962. Great vocals and acting and scenery-you name it and this movie has it.

I was just using the Straub-Huillet film as an "extreme" example. (In the case of Kurbick and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, he uses music as a comment, but he doesn't use music as the story. But Jonathan Rosenbaum always commented on Kubrick's use of music as central to his movies.) Just to give the idea that "musical" doesn't have to simply mean something that derived from the American musical comedy theater tradition. ACROSS THE UNIVERSE seems to me to be an "extreme" case of the way that the current generation of moviemakers uses music (pop and old movie scores) to generate emotion. This happened in Lucas's AMERICAN GRAFFITI and (of course) in Scorsese's MEAN STREETS; you can see it in Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino (to give to seemingly polarized recent examples). Even in a movie such as the recent Italian THE BEST OF YOUTH, the score is a motley compilation of various musical sources (Delerue's score for JULES AND JIM, a lot of Morricone, bits of Nino Rota, especially LA STRADA and NOTTI DI CABIRIA, etc.) and the music is supposed to cue you in to certain feelings, certain emotions.

But if people didn't have such a connection to music, they wouldn't want to make movies which expressed that connection. And that (in essence) is what a musical is: a movie in which people express their emotions through music. And that's why the "gay panic" expressed a while ago by so many on your blog was so perplexing: don't those boys listen to rock? Or rap? Or metal? Or hip-hop? Or anything? If they do, then why are they so freaked out by "musicals"? By any movie in which people sing and dance in the music of their era? Pop music has changed, but the emotion that people feel for pop music remains. (If it didn't, Dennis Potter's entire oeuvre wouldn't make any sense.) The "pop music" of the past may become more rarified for "today's" audiences (taking it into the realm of the epicene, and hence the fear of "gayness") but it WAS the pop music of its day, and the musicals of the period expressed that connection between pop music and mass audience.

And Julie Taymor is trying to show how the pop of another era EXPRESSES that era. It may seem wayward, but it is an attempt to express why the Beatles retain such a hold on the popular imagination, to show what those songs meant and how those songs helped to express the 1960s-early 1970s.

Well, Carrie, haven't written you for awhile and posting on anyone's 'blog' is a new thing for this past middle-age movie lover who can just about manage email, but had to write and tell you how much I loved all you wrote about Across the Universe. I too left the theater completely 'exhilarated'! It was so wonderful! My husband and I felt like we had just seen 5 of the best musicals -- the choreography was fabulous, the performers amazing, and we also felt like we'd just relived the 60's all over again! We've recommended it to our 'kids' -- who are all movie lovers and we know they'll love it too.
It was so ambitious, so creative, and it all 'worked'! I think Julie Taymor is a genius!
And you captured just how we felt in your blog article, as you always seem to do! Thanks again, Carrie! Peggy

Can't shake "Across the Universe." It really stayed with me and has grown in retrospect. Between the songs and that cast, it's compulsively watchable. Someday, a resourceful archivist should pair it on a double-bill with Gillian Armstrong's "Starstruck."