A desolate Liverpool beach scene next to those depressing docks at the mouth of the Mersey that only Gerry Marsden could possible "love", sees Jude sitting there and I thought OK, so he will be off to USA, but then he starts to sing Girl, in a haunting slowed down slightly de-scoused John Lennon voice and I said "this is gonna be great", BUT what is he going to do when he gets to the "Secret Wimmuns Business" parts of Girl? Well the answer was he stopped right there [Meatloaf] and we went into a brilliant comparison of the two cultures via Hold Me Tight, after first doing the equally brilliant Helter Skelter segment.
Please note the iconic Willard's head rises from water from Apocalypse Now, here for Lucy being "injected" into the present and repeated later for Max being "injected" into Vietnam. Totally brilliant by Taymor.
The start, in my view, was in fact a tribute to American Beauty in several ways. For starters the scene is an up front flash forward [as in American Beauty] to a situation towards the end of the movie. In the case of Across the Universe it seems to be when he first gets back to Liverpool, totally devastated, and "wanders lonely as a cloud" [but not quite "along the Sands of Dee", and without the unfortunate Mary and the cattle, all of that having been 10 miles South, but with equal depression], before he gets back to work at the depressing docks.
So younguns can follow, here are the words of Girl.
Is there anybody going to listen to my story
All about the girl who came to stay?
She's the kind of girl you want so much
It makes you sorry
Still you don't regret a single day.
Ah girl
Girl
When I think of all the times I've tried so hard to leave her
She will turn to me and start to cry;
And she promises the earth to me
And I believe her
After all this time I don't know why
Ah girl
Girl
She's the kind of girl who puts you down
When friends are there, you feel a fool.
When you say she's looking good
She acts as if it's understood.
She's cool, ooh, ooh, ooh,
Girl
Girl
Was she told when she was young that pain
Would lead to pleasure?
Did she understand it when they said
That a man must break his back to earn
His day of leisure?
Will she still believe it when he's dead?
Ah girl
Girl
As you can see these words show amazing knowledge of Secret Wimmuns Business [aka Eve Syndrome] only attempted by such as Bob Dylan in Gates of Eden [where Eve hangs out] but in deep code, whereas Girl is in yer face, and sure sent chills down my spine at the time as I observed what Jude calls "shaggers", ie bees to the honeypot, just waiting to grab my own gorgeous teenage model girlfriend, once I had to board the "Blue Bus" for Vietnam.
All about the girl who came to stay?
She's the kind of girl you want so much
It makes you sorry
Still you don't regret a single day.
Ah girl
Girl
When I think of all the times I've tried so hard to leave her
She will turn to me and start to cry;
And she promises the earth to me
And I believe her
After all this time I don't know why
Ah girl
Girl
She's the kind of girl who puts you down
When friends are there, you feel a fool.
When you say she's looking good
She acts as if it's understood.
She's cool, ooh, ooh, ooh,
Girl
Girl
Was she told when she was young that pain
Would lead to pleasure?
Did she understand it when they said
That a man must break his back to earn
His day of leisure?
Will she still believe it when he's dead?
Ah girl
Girl
As you can see these words show amazing knowledge of Secret Wimmuns Business [aka Eve Syndrome] only attempted by such as Bob Dylan in Gates of Eden [where Eve hangs out] but in deep code, whereas Girl is in yer face, and sure sent chills down my spine at the time as I observed what Jude calls "shaggers", ie bees to the honeypot, just waiting to grab my own gorgeous teenage model girlfriend, once I had to board the "Blue Bus" for Vietnam.
So once the Femo War was done and dusted in 1970 after the release of The
Female Eunuch, Girl was seen as a song that "revealed battle tactics" and got
"locked in that closet" [but not the one Prudence was in].
So in both movies the male lead is "telling us his story" about "the girl" and for Lester much further down the road he does one final attempt in his "where is the girl?" Hamlet bit, speaking of the pre 1970 version of Ms B, but it is of no avail.
Ms. B has been inflicting the PAIN for her own PLEASURE for years, and although she does not kill him it is only because the fag next door jumped out of his closet and beat her to it and Ms B is finally starting to THINK about the consequences as she slumps into her own [laundry] closet "when he's dead", so hearing Jude sing "she's the kind of girl you want so much it makes you sorry, still you don't regret a single day", and knowing the rest of the song is really spooky and makes you really fear for what trouble this likely lad from Liverpool might have inflicted on him down the line, across the "Universe" of the Atlantic.
As I say, totally brilliant. Now read on!
So in both movies the male lead is "telling us his story" about "the girl" and for Lester much further down the road he does one final attempt in his "where is the girl?" Hamlet bit, speaking of the pre 1970 version of Ms B, but it is of no avail.
Ms. B has been inflicting the PAIN for her own PLEASURE for years, and although she does not kill him it is only because the fag next door jumped out of his closet and beat her to it and Ms B is finally starting to THINK about the consequences as she slumps into her own [laundry] closet "when he's dead", so hearing Jude sing "she's the kind of girl you want so much it makes you sorry, still you don't regret a single day", and knowing the rest of the song is really spooky and makes you really fear for what trouble this likely lad from Liverpool might have inflicted on him down the line, across the "Universe" of the Atlantic.
As I say, totally brilliant. Now read on!
No comments:
Post a Comment