If you wanted to,
you can pinpoint the day I started listening to music and looking at films. I
mean really listening to music, obsessively, the same way I read books – trying
to decode its mysteries and secrets, trying to work out why it makes me feel
the way it does, trying to make sense of its sounds and melodies. Likewise with
films, the way meaning and shots work together, how the disparate elements add
to form the total (or not), how a film is made; how it all works.
July 2007, and I
was meant to be writing an essay at school in study hall when I found out about
Across The Universe, and…
well, one thing led to another, and I found a trailer for it and fell
in love with it – its colours, music, visuals, scope, diversity, sprawl. When
it opened in Australia in November, I asked my two best friends if they’d like
to see it with me, knowing they were huge Beatles fans, and so we went, and
‘everything changed’ that day, or so they say. From the film’s opening shot – a
slow zoom in to Jude sitting on an empty windswept beach, as the waves fell
upon the screen, intercut with archival images of protests and violence and
revolutions; as the all frenetic agitated guitar of ‘Helter Skelter’ cut across
it all, I remember thinking ‘so this is what it’s all about.’ The ‘it’ in
question was the Beatles – their music, their lyrics, personas; their magic,
their mystery, the phenomenon; their legacy. The film picked you up on “a wave
of terrific Beatles songs” and catapulted you head-first through the decade of
the Sixties – from the youthful innocence of the early days, to the
experimentation and exuberance of the psychedelic era, to the violence and
protests of Vietnam
‘Do you have any
of the Beatles’ music?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I replied,
immediately ashamed of the fact.
‘Right,’ he said.
‘We’re about to remedy that.’
