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Rockwell Matters Episode Transcript 12/03/07

We live in an era of the ascendancy of the baby boomers, those people officially born, I guess, from ’45 on, although some olders and some youngers, but what that means is, sort of, that the people who are sort of dominating our cultural world as creators and receivers and audiences are fascinated by the music of their youth. This is pretty natural – the Bobby-Soxers loved Sinatra, other people do too. And a lot of people love the music of the 60’s and 70’s, and so we’ve had an absolute onslaught of nostalgia for that era.

I myself spent the 60’s in Berkeley and I’m currently reading a memoir by a guy called Johnny Dolphin, which evokes the Haight-Asbury district in ’67 with eerie verisimilitude, but I’m thinking more of music and the jukebox musicals from people celebrating ABBA and Billy Joel, mostly taking the songs and stringing together a story to make the songs work, or biopics of people like Ray Charles or Johnny Cash. But the big guns of the 60’s and early 70’s were Bob Dylan and the Beatles, and they have been the recipients of particular attention, in particular two movies, "I’m Not There" and "Across the Universe."

"I’m Not There" is a film by Todd Haynes, and as anybody who reads about these things knows, the gimmick is that six people play Bob Dylan, none of them named Bob Dylan in the movie: Cate Blanchett, Ben Wishaw, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Marcus Carl Franklin and Heath Ledger. They have varying success; for me the most extraordinary ones were Cate Blanchett, of course, playing him in his skinny stovepipe pants British tour in ‘65-6 days, and Richard Gere, wonderful as an older Dylan, and Marcus Carl Franklin, a young, maybe like 11, black boy who plays early Dylan, with no reference ever to the fact that he’s black, it’s really quite wonderful – but they’re all good, and it doesn’t come across as a gimmick, it comes across as a successful portrayal of the varying sides of this ultimately changeable person.

Now, both of these films have terrific soundtracks. In the case of "I’m Not There," Dylan can be heard occasionally, but so can Richie Havens, Jeff Tweedy, Sonic Youth and Sufjan Stevens, several others – Willie Nelson, for one – interesting arrangements and there are interesting other actors, like Julianne Moore as Joan Baez, and Charlotte Gainsbourg as Dylan’s wife – all of them are really quite terrific.

Now, for me, however, "Across the Universe" was even greater. What’s fascinating about both of these movies is that they use the same format, stringing a story around hit songs; they evoke similar imagery, for example circus imagery in "I’m Not There," and they invoke similar characters, i.e. Edie Sedgwick, who was Sienna Miller in Factory Girl and who was Michelle Williams in "I’m Not There," and yet unlike, for example, poor Twyla Tharp - I say that because she’s so wonderful and she fouled up "The Times They Are a-Changin’," her Dylan jukebox musical – the imagery in these movies just works, and "Across the Universe" works, for me, absolutely magically.

This is the latest movie of Julie Taymor, and it stars a young British actor named Jim Sturges, who’s adorable and wonderful as Jude, and Evan Rachel Wood, who is Lucy, and who is also wonderful, and it also has its share of fabulous cameos by the likes of Joe Cocker, Bono, Eddie Izzard, Salma Hayek as a décolletaged singing nurse, and many others. It also has an extraordinary soundtrack by T-Bone Burnett, a person named Matias Goel, and Elliot Goldenthal, Julie Taymor’s companion, which is not the Beatles’ arrangements, but which works perfectly.

It’s a mystery to me why some of these jukebox musicals and “jukebox movies,” if you wish, work and some do not. Stephen Holden, in his review in the New York Times, said that he was captivated by "Across the Universe" and just sucked into its world and it never let go. A few people have complained that it’s a notch too long, but my gosh, it’s a compelling and sweet and beautiful movie. If you’re a baby boomer, or not, because Dylan and the Beatles have retained their popularity with younger generations, I think you’ll find this movie absolutely captivating – almost everybody I’ve talked to has found it just that.

This is John Rockwell for Rockwell Matters.

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