Note to self: Reminder. No one reads your posts apart from you, so just share your statements so that when you're older and go back to your blog remember one of the things that made you be who you are or you once were– the Across The Universe movie, that is.
I was 9-ish the first time I watched it on the movie theater. Little did I know that it would become one of my top 10 all-time favorite movies. It took me 10 years to feel and have this attachment to it. Sometimes it even takes longer. I guess I was lucky– I guess I am lucky. Had my 9-year-old self known that this movie would have made me feel the way that makes me feel these days– I would have not even believed it back then.
Many people who are not fans of this movie happen to be fans of The Beatles and it is one of the main reasons why they hate this movie so much. It is not just that none of the Beatles appear in the movie, but that (according to some) none of the songs are performed the way the Beatles did. I get it– but I am myself a huge Beatles fan and I adore this movie so much. What's more, I really like their performance– especially 'Blackbird', 'Oh Darling', 'Because' and 'I Want To Hold Your Hand'.
Back to my latest point, though, this movie was not meant to be taken as a "Beatles movie" or based on them, or whatever, you know. It simply reflects the issues that the latest Beatles' songs meant– and shared in times of war, death, and the need for love and peace– and put them into context. A context which could sadly still be applied to our present days...
In other words, this movie not only does it reflect those messages of peace and love The Beatles shared with the world, but it compares them to the reality of what was happening in that time in both America and the UK– and the world, really. Songs like "Let It Be", "Strawberry Fields", "Revolution", "Across The Universe", "Happiness Is A Warm Gun", "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", among others. The movie reflects them in the main characters's needs and it mainly makes the viewer familiarise and sympathise with them and feel their pain, and sorrow, and dreams vanished because of the reality in which they are living– the American Dream's nemesis.
Apart from the excellent aspects of content, the form in which the film is unconventionally presented is genuinely brilliant. The negatives shots, the distorted sounds, and even the choreography, create this mixture of texture and emotions and sensations in the movie that can easily be seen in a world of constant war– an emergence of radical values towards love and peace and extremely against the authorities, and those who obeyed them, of the time.
I'd love to finish my general view on this film by quoting one of my favourite lines from this movie:
"'I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.' That is so right. You know, and if nobody's everybody then someone can be anybody, right?"
