Ka Leo O Hawaii

Issue date: 11/5/07 Section: Commentary

Media Credit: Courtesy of Students for a Democratic Society A poster with this slogan is seen in "Across the Universe." "Bring the War Home" was the slogan used for the 1969 "Days of Rage" protest in Chicago, which led to 600 broken windows, 800 wrecked cars and 287 arrests.

Media Credit: Courtesy of Students for a Democratic Society

Media Credit: Courtesy of The Sixties Project

An unwinnable war in a distant land fought for incomprehensible reasons with unspeakable brutality against people we do not know. A mystic chord of memory runs from the jungles of Vietnam to the sands of Iraq and across 40 years back to America. Now comes, at just the right time, a film to strike that chord.If you give a f--- about this world and your country, see "Across the Universe" this week at Ward Stadium 16.

"Across the Universe" won't end the war in Iraq or save the world from global warming, from terrorism - and us. That's for you to do by doing your part. But the Vietnam War experience is the best and only guide we have for causing radical social change.

Unfortunately, few reviewers realize that "Across the Universe" isn't a boy-meets-girl story set to Beatles tunes. If it were, it would be as flimsy as a Savoy truffle.

Rather, the main character in "Across the Universe" is America - the film unblinkingly shows the radical transformation this nation underwent between its complacent early '60s and the fury and violence at the decade's end, when the nation's contradictions could no longer be ignored.

Nothing but a movie like "Across the Universe" can show anyone who didn't live through those times how and why thousands of young people could seriously think of overthrowing the government and economic system of "AmeriKKKa." The speed with which the national mood changed from 1964 to 1968 - fast enough to oust a president - spun student frustration into a tornado of fury.

As director Julie Taymor declared, "I really want young people to see the passion in this movie - to see with what fervor these characters invested themselves into social movements."

"Across the Universe" illustrates that passion, and also shows how art, music, drugs and sex were instrumental in this political explosion. However, it also makes us realize that passion is often not enough.

The voice of Paul Potter, then a young college student, still echoes from the first national anti-Vietnam War protest in 1965: "How do you stop a war? ... Do you march to Washington? Who will hear us? How can you make the decision makers hear us ... if they cannot hear the screams of a little girl burnt by napalm?"

In "Across the Universe," a young woman named Lucy marches with her brother and her friends in Washington, D.C., against the war. Then, after her brother is drafted into that war, she declares her willingness to lie down in front of a tank to bring him home.

Soon after, she helps take over Columbia University - a real event in 1968. Bailed out from jail, she discovers her friends building a bomb.

"From Protest to Resistance," to quote a slogan of those times. What does that mean? What is the dividing line, or is there one?

Soldiers and police could kill students in California, Ohio, Mississippi - what could be done? As Neil Young sang, "What if you knew her, and found her dead on the ground?" What could you do? What would you do?

The Rolling Stones insisted that "War"­­ - civil war - "is just a shot away!" At the film's climax, the questions Lucy faces are ones that thousands of Americans faced then, and may yet again some day.

In short, "Across the Universe" is about today, for today. However many reviewers miss this, many ordinary people - people not in the movie - have recognized the film's currency.

For example, according to the movie's makers, in the neighborhood where the peace march scene was filmed, area residents wanted to leave up the peace symbols and anti-war banners put up for the film.

Likewise, several restaurants in the New York neighborhood where many scenes were filmed kept up the psychedelic signs and murals created for the movie. The mystic chord sounds again.

Ultimately, "we regret to inform you" there's no need to "bring the war home." Ask the homeless Iraq vet I met a few weeks ago - it's here already. See this film this week.

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