This Oscar nominee was nominated in the category of Best Achievement in Costume Design; a bit of a redundant name for a category if you ask me. "Best Achievement" sounds like a term thought up by a second-year English student. But I digress. Across the Universe came out on DVD on February 5th, and is the only thing happening on that uneventful day. If you've missed the advertisements, the film is the heir apparent to Moulin Rouge, a post-modern musical full of pre-written pop songs. The gimmick this time around? The songs are all Beatles songs, and the backdrop of the film is the backdrop of the Beatles' music, the turbulent 1960s.

When I first heard about this film when it was in production, I thought it was a good idea. The idea of a Beatles musical has always been in my mind, as turning The White Album into a story seemed like a worthy and difficult but not wholly impossible task. Then, I saw an ad for the film, and my hopes were more than a little dashed. It seemed, based on that trailer, that the film was hoping to redeem a trite and contrived story with lots of colors and the most popular songs of all time. It still seems that way, but I have to admit to enjoying the film far more than I had anticipated.

Essentially Forrest Gump with music, Across the Universe crams as much 60s "atmosphere" into a two hour block as I've ever seen. Much like Forrest Gump, it holds no true revelations or astute observations about the climate of the 1960s, relying rather on simple parables of life 40 years ago that are tinted with unfamiliar romanticism rather than the aching (and painful) nostalgia of Gump. The story is weak and predictable, the characters flat and mostly uninteresting. But the film wears its weaknesses on its sleeve to the extent that they become almost forgivable, and it is not without its strengths.

Across the Universe becomes an appreciable film when you realize that it isn't meant to be directly about the times, places, or characters depicted therein, but about the songs themselves. This, anyway, is largely how I grew to appreciate it. The film's main strength is that it provides a context for the Beatles' music. The songs are integrated into the fabric of the 60s so much that they affect the characters' names (e.g., Sadie, Maxwell, Lucy, Jude, JoJo, Dr. Robert, Mr. Kite, Prudence) and ways of speaking ("Where'd she come from?" "She came in through the bathroom window"). Placing the songs in a film where they make narrative sense helps us to understand the songs better, dare I say. "I Want To Hold Your Hand" reflects the repressed sexuality of the early 60s and "Let It Be" becomes all the more powerful when sung by a young black child caught up in the race riots of the late 60s. The film's representations of the 1960s are simplistic and parabolic, but they serve their purpose, giving us an even better appreciation of some of the Beatles' best work.

This is not to say, however, that the versions of the songs represented in the film are in any way improvements on The Beatles' original recordings. More than anything, the film made me want to listen to the "real" versions of the twenty-odd songs featured within. And this one interesting aspect of the film does not fully compensate for its oft-trite narrative. It is one I would tentatively recommend, but don't expect anything grand. As for the film's Oscar nomination, I don't know from costume design. I suppose it was good; certainly the overall design of most of the singing sequences was very good indeed. The Oscar for custume design just seems like a category created for mediocre films with delusions of gradeur, or ones for which the studios had high hopes that deflated when the film tanked with critics (examples include Sleepy Hollow and The Red Violin); a consolation prize for respected filmmakers who have made less-than-respected films. At least the Academy had the good sense not to nominate this film for Best Picture.