Julie Taymor's Across The Universe

The United States in the mid-1960s was a period of revolution. Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe is set in this era, in the midst of the Vietnam War, the black civil rights movement, gay liberation, and the LSD movement. It was a time of radical change, chaos, as well as social and political instability. In three significant scenes, through the use of angles and lighting, Taymor illustrates the burdens of the Vietnam war, and how these burdens cause necessary transitions in Lucy, Jude, and Max.
Lucy, a happy-go-lucky teenaged girl at the beginning of the film, is thrown into a brutal reality and forced to make changes to her idealistic views and feelings regarding the war when her boyfriend Daniel is killed in action in Vietnam. In the
scene directly following Daniel's funeral, there is a shot of Lucy lying on her bed, half of her engulfed in shadows, with the sun shining on the other half (Taymor, 36:22). She is shot slightly in profile, further suggesting the two conflicting sides of her. The physical contrast between light and dark in the shot, and how they appear to be trying to take over one another, symbolizes Lucy's own internal battle. There is a sudden understanding within her that the war is not the dream of heroes, bravery, and glory as she previously fantasized. The death of Daniel jolts her and opens her eyes to the reality of war. The light represents the innocent and naive girl that Lucy was immediately before the death of Daniel, and the dark represents the despair that she currently feels, as well as her new-found understanding that she must take a stand for what she now believes in. Taymor uses a high, slightly oblique angle in this shot to further emphasize Lucy's feelings of devastating loss and despair. By making the angle slightly oblique, Taymor adds feelings of instability and insecurity to the shot. Her use of a high angle creates the sense of vulnerability and highlights Lucy's helplessness and confusion.

A rebellious young man who doesn't take orders from anyone, Max is shaken up by Uncle Sam when he receives his draft letter (Taymor, 45:25).
Choosing serving in the army over imprisonment, Max reluctantly goes to an induction centre for evaluation and enlistment (Taymor, 53:03). The building is shot from a low angle, making it seem terrifying and intimidating in size as well as content. The low angle also emphasizes the control and power that the United States government, represented by the induction centre, has over Max and the other drafted soldiers. Once inside the building, Max is stripped down to his underwear and placed in a room full of other recruits, as well as the training officers (Taymor, 53:59). The contrast between the officers shot from a low angle and clad in their dark green uniforms with their identical mask-like faces and Max and the recruits shot from a high angle standing half naked with fear in their eyes is striking. Taymor uses this scene to show the unsympathetic hold the army has on these involuntary new soldiers. Directly following this scene is one with the new soldiers, still half naked, carrying the Statue of Liberty on their shoulders (55:20-55:40). It too is shot from a high angle, once again showing vulnerability and powerlessness of Max in this situation. The once stubborn man now realizes that he is unable to continue his life as rebellious and carefree as he once did unless he is willing to face the consequences, which in this
case is serving time in jail. Jude, an illegal immigrant from Liverpool, faces the personal problem of not having a cause for which to fight.
Lucy is adamantly protesting the war in which her previous boyfriend was killed and her brother and Jude's best friend is currently serving, leaving Jude feeling useless and insignificant in the middle of it all. Toward the end of the film, after an argument between Jude and Lucy about Jude's passive attitude regarding the war, Jude storms into the Students for Democratic Reform building where Lucy is a volunteer protestor and organizer, infuriated, tearing the room apart while attempting to get across to Lucy how he disagrees with the way the group is trying to protest (Taymor, 1:31:38-1:33:40). Jude returns home the next morning to discover that Lucy has moved out (Taymor, 1:38:10). Jude is now not only without his best friend Max, but has lost the girl he loves as well, all the while feeling like an outcast lost in the chaos. There is a shot of him slouched in a doorway after his discovery, shot at a high angle, featuring again a contrast between light and dark (Taymor, 1:38:41). Jude's position in the centre of the doorway shot at from high angle, literally between two sides, represents his feelings of being powerless and stuck in the middle of the chaos the war has created in New York City and in his personal relationships. It is a literal depiction of the fact that Jude has no side to fight for, and is the scene which causes him to reevaluate what he
wants, and forces him to choose a side, which, as is revealed, ends up being his love for Lucy (Taymor, 1:41:30-1:41:50; 1:56:00-1:59:00).
The challenges and hardships faced by Lucy, Max, and Jude which lead them to reconsider how and what they think about their individual situations and themselves are emphasized effectively by Taymor because of her immense understanding and use of film photography techniques and the ways in which these elements ultimately bring theme to life. Across the Universe is a film in which Taymor uses her artistic ability to comment on personal identity and internal conflict brought on by chaos in the revolutionary era of the 1960s.