If you are below the age of 40, you should perhaps skip this column. Or, on second thoughts, maybe you should read the first one-and-a-half paragraphs. For, you would most likely have grown up with U2 or Oasis or Coldplay. The Beatles would be just some historical entity, like Crosby Stills & Nash. So let me sell some Beatles music to you.

Across The Universe (2007) is a quirky, touching and visually stunning movie built around 33 Beatles songs. Watch this movie, get acquainted with the Beatles, and I don’t care if you find the movie’s versions of the songs much better than the originals (They couldn’t have got better without their, well, strong foundations). The rest of this column is for people above 40, who are Beatles fans, so you can safely drop out now.

In Across, the story hardly matters (let’s just say it’s a love story set against the backdrop of the Vietnam war and the anti-war protests, with most of the cast named after characters in Beatles songs, like Jude, Lucy and Sadie (who is of course a very sexy lady, since she’s taken from the song Sexy Sadie), but what is dazzling is the way it is told, how the songs have been interpreted, and how elements in the lyrics have been given new meaning. For example, in the hands of director Julie Taymor, the simple, happy I Want To Hold Your Hand becomes a heartrending and beautiful lament of forbidden love. You have to hear it to believe that I Want To had this hidden inside it.

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