by Monica Davies

Created on: July 02, 2009   Last Updated: July 03, 2009

Across The Universe is a musical feature film that was released in October 2007. It is an original screenplay that uses 33 songs composed by The Beatles to tell its story. Julie Taymor, the film's director, has completely appropriated these works by The Beatles to show her view of the protest about America's participation in the Vietnam War, which is what the film's main debate centres around. This assignment is a personal interpretation of Across The Universe using the principles of Hermeneutics, which will then be tested against the interpretations of other audience members.

The plot of the film:
Set in the 1960s, the story starts out in Liverpool, England, where Jude works in the local shipyard. He is packing up to get on a ship to America, in search of his father, who he has never met. At the same time, Lucy, a young girl in Massachusetts in America, is bidding her boyfriend farewell as he goes to fight in the Vietnam War.

Jude arrives at Princeton University (Across The Universe, 2008) in New Jersey, looking for the professor he believes to be his father. He meets a student there, Max, who points out the janitor, who is really Jude's father.

At a loss for where to go from here, Max invites Jude to Massachusetts for Thanksgiving, where he meets Lucy, Max's younger sister. Jude immediately falls in love with her. At dinner, Max announces that he is dropping out of college and moving to New York City (Across The Universe, 2008). Jude and Max then rent a room from a singer, Sadie, in the psychedelic Greenwich Village.

The last main character is introduced when Jojo arrives in New York from violence-striken Detroit. He becomes the guitar player in Sadie's band and lives in the same commune as the rest of the characters.

At this point, Lucy receives the news that her boyfriend has been killed in Vietnam. Having been shocked by attending her first funeral ever (Taymor, 2007), she decides to go and stay with Jude and Max in New York City for a summer before college. She brings with her a letter for Max - drafting him to fight in Vietnam.
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The film becomes grittier and more turbulent here, when Max is shipped off to fight and Lucy joins a radical anti-war movement. Sadie and Jojo have a fallout and Jude's previous idyllic life starts to go very wrong, forcing him and Lucy against all odds to find their own way back to each other (Across The Universe, 2008).
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The dialogical question posed by the film:
The film enters into a dialogue with the audience about the effects

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