Across the Universe

2007’s Across the Universe is an ode to the Beatles and truly a brilliant piece of artwork. The film fuses intense imagery with whimsical lyrics. Set in the 1960’s, it is a love story between an upper class American girl and a poor boy from Liverpool. They are surrounded by the Vietnam War, protests, the struggle for civil rights, and, of course, drugs and rock n’ roll (Crisafulli,Paoletta, & Cohen, 28). The film is a prime example of the use of semiotics in cinema. Semiotics is the language of cinema. It is the ability of the viewer to read an image physically, mentally, and psychologically. Signs can either be an icon, an index, or a symbol. An icon is a direct representation of the image itself. An index is not the exact image is it representing, but a learned association. Last, a symbol is an arbitrary sign with a culturally agreed upon meaning. Of course it is not an exact science, as said in an article by Dan Harris, “The text’s actual use and meaning in the case of language is reciprocally determined by whose word it is and for whom is it meant” (Harris 46). Thus, as viewers we are both individually impacted by images and united by them.
The scene titled “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)is filled with imagery dealing with patriotism, war, protest, and individualism. The sequence is about Max attempting to get out of the draft. In the first scene, the camera tilts downward toward the entrance of the military building. The shot stops as Max walks through the doors with an American flags hanging on either side. By tilting downward, the shot is symbolic of an ominous feeling of facing a fear head on. The American flags are symbolic of the United States, patriotism, and freedom. They can also be a synecdoche for the American government and it’s control.
As Max enters the building, the doors close behind him and two pictures of Uncle Sam are seen hanging on either side of the entrance. The doors closing is symbolic of being trapped. Uncle Sam is an icon of the American government. The camera then zooms in on Max’s face as he looks at Uncle Sam. The closeness of the camera is symbolic of nervousness and unease. The Uncle Sam then bursts into the song “I Want You.” This is ironic because the Uncle Sam image is known for the saying “I Want You to join the U.S. Army.”
Max then is stripped of his clothes by Army soldiers as he moves down an assembly line. The soldiers all have the same face with distorted features. It symbolizes the notion that Army brainwashes and turns the soldiers into clones. At the end of the scene, the boys are all seen carrying the Statue of Liberty through a terrain representative of Vietnam. The Statue of Liberty is an index of the greater American ideal of freedom. This is also ironic, because the draft removes the same freedom they are forced to fight for.