Across the Universe Analysis Across the Universe is a fictional love story directed by Julia Taymor based off

of songs by the Beatles. The nature of the film as a whole is one great reconstructed and pretextual work that is based off of the iconic Beatles discography. The film incorporates 34 songs originally written by the Beatles that were re-recorded by the film cast for the film, and songs and lyrics inspire the main characters names. The narrative takes place in England and America during the 1960s Vietnam War era and centers around the anti-war protests, the civil rights movement, mind exploration, the proliferation of drug culture, rock and roll, and the love between a poor English dockworker and a well-off girl from the northeast United States. The films opening scene from 1:00 to 2:30 is one of the most memorable. In an autonomic sequence, Jude is sitting on a beach staring at the crashing waves. The camera moves closer in a close-up on his face as he turns to look the audience in the eye, breaking the fourth wall. He begins to sing Girl, which starts with the lyrics, Is there anybody going to listen to my story, as a method for introducing his memories which make up the narrative. An extreme close-up of his face dissolves to crashing waves overlaid with unsaturated footage of Lucy being held back by police, followed by shots of military troops, protesters clashing with police, and falling newspapers aligned with the rolling waves crashing toward the camera as Helter Skelter plays off-screen as unmarked, unaffecting sound. These waves slowly blur to barely recognizable particles, which fade into other blurred particles that then un-blur to reveal a disco ball and the title screen.

The densest scene in the film is definitely from 1:26:00 to 1:29:30 when Jude is jealous of how much time Lucy is spending at anti-war meetings and rallies with Paco, the leader of a loosely knit organization protesting the war. Jude is sitting alone looking screen left barely lit by harsh light from the left side, smoking a joint and we can hear a television newscaster talking about casualties of the war as diegetic sound. He looks down, and a cut to a close-up shot of piled strawberries occurs. He looks up in revelation, and starts to sing Strawberry Fields as he turns his face to screen right and slowly moves into soft lighting. He picks up the strawberries and begins pinning them to a white poster on the wall in symmetrical rows and columns. The juice from the strawberries bleeds down the poster. (1:26:45-1:27:00). At 1:27:13 Lucy looks through the door at him working lit by harsh lighting from the left, and then slowly slightly screen right as soft lighting brightens and illuminates her from screen right. This draws a parallelism between Lucy and Jude because of the same lighting structure used for Jude earlier when he first realizes how to use the strawberries. The next shot is a zoom in of the television that is playing footage from the Vietnam War. On the screen is Max in army uniform mouthing the words to the song, which goes from unsaturated and noisy like it is being displayed on an old standard definition television congruent with the time period to high definition and clear, bringing the audience into the war scene which creates a shift in the primary identification from Lucy to Max. It cuts back to an extreme close-up footage of a gun projected onto a close-up of Lucys face as a single tear slides down her cheek, mimicking the single streaks of the stricken strawberries. This again is creating a

parallelism in that while the signifiers are different they are similar enough to insinuate the same signified of loss and death. This extreme close-up of the gun along with the previous war footage signifies ensuing violence, and immediately following Lucys face there is a transition to a medium shot of a soldier holding the same gun walking in slow motion in a field. He is shot in the chest and collapses. Max falls to his knees in shock behind the collapsed soldier, continuing to sing along to the soundtrack, and Judes face fades into the right near figure-ground singing as well. This dissolves to the canvas filling the frame with Judes strawberry art, which serves a transition for an extreme close-up of Maxs helmet and Jude overlaid on it throwing strawberries straight at the camera which then explode in the center of the frame, seemingly over Max. One by one the strawberries on the canvas begin to explode behind Maxs face. Jude throws more strawberries at the camera and a match cut occurs with extreme long shots of explosions in forests, signifying Vietnam. Jude grabs handfuls of strawberries and a cut occurs to them dropping into red paint, which splashes all over the floor and his feet. This cuts to a close-up of Judes face with the bowl of paint and strawberries falling into it overlaid on his expression. In the distant figure ground is a similar canvas, which is dripping with red paint on screen left and a smaller section of green paint on screen right. Following is intellectual montage of Jude splashing paint on the canvas interspliced with war footage and strawberries dropping from the sky with offscreen, marked sound of quickly falling objects. The sound combined with footage of

explosions and falling strawberries signifies that the fruit is being compared to dropping bombs. The intellectual montage continues in a bracket syntagma of war, nature, and paint footage, associating the dripping fruits with blood. Televisions getting shot, flying helicopters, explosions, the audio previously identified with dropping bombs, strawberries falling from the sky with trails of fire behind them, Jude madly attacking the canvas with paint, and a grenade that is squished like a strawberry by an unidentified hand all follow before the scene ends in a fade to an extreme closeup of the interior of a washing machine that then zooms out to reveal Lucy and Jude waiting in a laundromat which introduces the next scene. The Strawberry Fields scene is perhaps the most memorable out of the entire film because of its intricate overlapping and juxtaposition of the fruit and paint, Jude and Lucys outlooks on the war versus Maxs experience in it, and of course the intense visual display of the iconographic images of strawberries, blood, and war. While over coded because of how much visual and acoustic information is presented in conjunction with the strawberry, it is abundantly clear that Judes mission is to have an impact on the war with his art and that the strawberry signifies life and the tacks through them represent the conflict and loss of life inherent in the Vietnam War. The last scene that is particularly striking for me is from 1:40:00 to 1:42:45 when Jude encounters Pacos resistance group protesting in Washington D.C. This scene directly parallels the opening sequence of the protests with the waves and Lucy being dragged by the police. The scene opens with a continuation of Jude

singing the title track, Across the Universe, from the previous scene inside a subway train, and he is walking with the crowd when he notices Paco leading a strike. At 1:40:35 there is a displaced insert of Sadie singing and waving her hair with harsh backlighting and the song begins to transition to Helter Skelter which plays throughout the protest, further paralleling the opening sequence. These displaced inserts allow the song to be contained in its own diegesis while simultaneously playing throughout the series of shots. At 1:41:33 Jude notices Lucy being hauled by the police and calls out to her, which she responds to by yelling out his name. They repeatedly call out each others names throughout the scene. At 1:42:58 an alternate syntagma with Max fighting in Vietnam appears, which triggers the displaced inserts of Sadie, which are still appearing at points, to now mutate and distort themselves; first playing in reverse and then being reflected along the y-axis in a mirror effect. The harsh backlighting on Sadies long, glowing hair creates an analogous relationship between the bright explosions in the clips of Max in Vietnam and the photographers bright flash bulbs at the protest allowing easier match cutting and transitions amongst the three. Following the affected clips of Sadie is a return to the alternate syntagmas of Max in Vietnam and the protest where Jude and Lucy are. The scene ends as Jude lies on the ground with a bloodied face, and cuts to a close-up on Maxs face that then dissolves at 1:42:50 to six freakishly white, nude females all with black hair. The audio also switches from Helter Skelter and an unidentified, dramatic instrumental fading back into a brief excerpt from Across the Universe, with the only lyrics being Nothings going to change my world. The fantastical women are

expressionistically moving in slow motion in synced choreography on top of rippling water. They then all stop at 1:43:10 and stand in a T-pose, reminiscent of the classic Christian cross, before falling backward with horrified expressions into the water. The last shot is of eight of these females floating face-up in the water. Four of them have bodies visible underneath the surface of the water, but the other four are merely floating heads that do not even have discernable hair. Across the Universe is simultaneously film and long-form music video. It can hold its own as a work of art, but with the intended audiences likely knowledge and preconceived notions of the Beatles ideology it too works as both tribute and homage to the music that defined a generation and continues to have as great an impact today as it did half a century ago.