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
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
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