Across the Universe
Short description
Across the Universe is a romantic drama set in the late 1960s, following Jude, a young shipyard worker from Liverpool who travels to the United States in search of the father he never knew. There he meets Lucy, and the two fall in love amid the anti-war protests, counterculture and social upheaval of the era. When Lucy's brother Max is drafted to fight in Vietnam, the couple is drawn into the growing peace movement, while the political tensions and violence of the time threaten to pull them apart.
The film was directed by Julie Taymor, its third feature after Titus (1999) and Frida (2002). Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais wrote the screenplay, and the large production credits 139 cast members and 173 crew. Evan Rachel Wood plays Lucy Carrigan and Jim Sturgess plays Jude, with Joe Anderson as Max Carrigan, Dana Fuchs as Sadie, Martin Luther McCoy as Jo-Jo and T.V. Carpio as Prudence. The story is built around songs by the Beatles, which accompany and comment on the events on screen.
Released in September 2007, the film runs 133 minutes and blends drama, fantasy and romance. Made for about 70 million dollars, it returned roughly 29 million dollars worldwide, a result well below its production cost. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.3 from around 117,000 votes, and on TMDB a rating of 7.1 from about 1,484 votes. A critics' rating of 6.1 from 176 reviews places it below the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- "Across the Universe" is Julie Taymor's third film (not counting three earlier works made for television).
- The guitarist and singer Yo-Yo, played by Martin Luther, is more than an obvious allusion to Jimi Hendrix. Like Hendrix, Yo-Yo arrives in New York with only a guitar, and it is in this city that his career begins. In addition, Sadie dresses Yo-Yo in a purple shirt and places a floral bandana on his head. Yo-Yo protests, but it is precisely this shirt and bandana that are most strongly associated with Hendrix.
- "Across the Universe" is the title of one of The Beatles' songs.
- Doctor Robert’s (Bono’s) painted bus and his song “I Am a Walrus” immediately reference the psychedelic bus from the Beatles’ television comedy “Magical Mystery Tour” (1967) and Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters with their famous bus trip across America. And when Doctor Robert arrives at Doctor Gary’s town and immediately turns back, it’s a nod to Timothy Leary, the legendary popularizer of LSD, and his well-known conflict with Ken Kesey.
- Jude’s “strawberry” technique of creating his canvases, splattering them with red paint, alludes to the work of Jackson Pollock. This is, obviously, a reference to The Beatles’ bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, who was also an artist and adored Pollock’s paintings. Sutcliffe’s story was told in Ian Softly’s film “Backbeat” (1994).
- Bono, Eddie Izzard, Salma Hayek, Joe Cocker, Robert Clohessy, Linda Emond, Logan Marshall-Green, Harry J. Lennix, and James Urbaniak made cameo appearances.
- To avoid attacks from overly curious 'Beatlemaniacs,' the film was delivered to some cinemas under the false title 'Love and Freedom.'
- The mass of supposedly fictional events in the film hint at similar ones that actually occurred. These include the student riot at Columbia University, the explosion in one of New York’s houses, when three radicals were blown up by their own homemade bombs, and the final scene, in which Sadie and her rock band are driven off the roof of a building by the police for an unauthorized concert – just as the police once drove the “Beatles” off a roof in London. Incidentally, this concert in the film takes place on the roof of a place numbered 9 – which alludes to the song “Revolution 9” from “The White Album”.
- Practically everything in the film is, in one way or another, tied to The Beatles' songs. Its title is "Across the Universe," a Beatles song from 1969 that later appeared in a modified form on their final album, "Let It Be." The tagline came from another of their songs – "All You Need Is Love." Also, the names of all the characters are taken from Beatles songs – Lucy, Jude, Sadie, Mr. Kite, Doctor Robert, Prudence, Jo-Jo, Rita.
- A shipyard worker tells Jude to think about what he will do when he turns 64. This is a reference to Paul McCartney’s song “When I’m Sixty-Four.”
- 90% of the songs performed by the actors in the film were recorded "live" directly on the set and were not later dubbed with studio recordings. And young Evan Rachel Wood delivered the song "If I Fell" literally on the first take.
- The film's title, slogan, setting, and musical runtime are borrowed from the legendary Beatles.
- Sadie is, of course, Janis Joplin, incidentally Dana Fuchs’s favorite singer. Sadie even adopted Joplin’s habit of drinking “Jack Daniel’s” straight from the bottle. But the heroine’s name came from the song “Sexy Sadie” (from “The White Album”).
- Joe Anderson auditioned for the role of Jude. But he convinced Julie Taymor that his role was Max, and he identified with him the most.
- In an early script, the action unfolded over seven years, from 1963 to 1969. But in the film, it is compressed to two years.
- A total of 34 Beatles compositions were used in the film.
- Prudence gets into Sadie’s apartment by climbing through the bathroom window. The Beatles have a song called “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window.”
- Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono readily agreed to Julie Taymor's request to help her with filming. Later, Taymor arranged a private screening for McCartney. The ex-Beatle stated that he had fallen in love with the film.
- Sadie says that Max seems harmless, but who knows – maybe he killed someone with a silver hammer. Later, Max will indeed have a silver hammer in his hands, and the scene will too obviously allude to The Beatles’ song “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”
- An early script version featured a character named Sergeant Pepper – a reference to the Beatles’ album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Later, the character was cut from the final script.
- In one scene, Jude and Lucy literally look like John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the famous cover of Rolling Stone magazine (issue 335, January 22, 1981). The creators of the comedy "Good Luck, Chuck!" (2007) also parodied this cover on their poster.
- Sadie introduces herself and her band as "Sadie and the Sloppy Boys." This is a reference to the Creedence Clearwater Revival album "Willie and the Poor Boys."
- The film was released in wide release in America on October 9, 2007. October 9 is John Lennon's birthday.
- To adapt The Beatles' songs to the film's plot, the screenwriters "named" the main characters after names from songs by the Liverpool Four.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
