Kick the Amp Over

Dear Julie Taymor, director of the 2007 film Across the Universe,

Please never make another film. Furthermore, please officially go on record as saying that Across the Universe was the biggest disgrace to film, music, and art in history.

Recently, I was subjected to your film. I am a life-long die-hard Beatles fan and a good friend of mine told me to watch the film, even though I’m hesitant to watch anything Beatles-related. The reason being that no one holds true to the artistic integrity of the Beatles and frequently just use the amazing success and influence of the Beatles as a crutch for their poorly constructed film. Yours is no exception. In fact, it’s the epitome of everything that is wrong with Beatles-related film.

The whole film is just an unorganized hodge-podge of contrived references not only to the Beatles but to the ’60s. There’s no continuity– the songs played jump from early to late Beatles arbitrarily. This provides absolutely no interesting point whatsoever. The ’60s unfolded in such an interesting manner, from early violence of the JFK assassination to the escalation of Vietnam, reaching to the Summer of Love, ending up back with an escalation of Vietnam and the election of a corrupt Republican president. However, your film chooses not only to ignore the progression of one of the most significant periods of American history, it clearly didn’t even research it in the first place.

Just for example, the scene referencing Martin Luther King’s assassination has two songs from the White Album playing behind it, even though the White Album came out seven months after MLK died. I’m sure this seemed like a minute detail to you, but anyone with any decent knowledge of American history would’ve known this, and given the frequency of which important events occurred during the ’60s (it was a highly concentrated period of time) this anachronism sticks out like a sore thumb. It’d be like putting Modest Mouse in a film about Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

The anachronistic element could be slightly overlooked, I suppose (if we’re really lowering the bar of good cinema and good storytelling), but the biggest injustice is the renditions of the Beatles songs. The Beatles have such a diverse catalog that they really could’ve passed for about five bands. But you reduced all of their tracks to watered-down, similar-sounding crap. There’s no diversity, it’s all super radio-friendly, and quite frankly it’s boring.

This alone is a rape and pillaging of the Beatles music. And I will personally never forgive you for the inclusion of actual strawberries during “Strawberry Fields Forever.” You’re not a very abstract person, are you?

No, you aren’t. In fact, the references are outright laughable. I wonder how hard you must’ve worked to come up with a way to use the line “she came in through the bathroom window.” Clearly not too hard, because I actually cracked up at it. But it’s not nearly as forced as the “you may have killed your mother with a hammer” line directed at Max. You should really look into subtlety.

This film was nothing more than a marketing ploy aimed at girls. A pseudo-musical using classic songs with an attractive, British male lead– we can see right through that. Well, unfortunately not enough people can see through it, because the movie was still very succesful.

But I hope you burn in Hell for it. Or at least go through personal Hell. Clearly you have no decent knowledge of the Beatles, nor did you care enough to get someone on your staff to research them, but you should feel awful for what you’ve created. Creativity in general basically didn’t exist before the Beatles. Then, once they attained success, they continued to follow their creativity. They could’ve released “Please Please Me” 15 times and made a fortune and still been the richest people in the country at that time. However, they have more artistic integrity. They opted to record “Sgt. Pepper’s” even though it was completely off the wall for that time period.

Your film has no such thing, and you should feel terrible for trying to make a buck off of four of the most important artistic, political, and creative figures in human history.

And the Bono cameo? Bono is probably the only person on earth more clueless about artistic integrity than you are.

Please never make another movie and please apologize for the injustice you have created.

Sincerely,

Greg