Cloud Atlas - Edit 2
Before modification by Nate at 28/10/2012 12:35:01 AM
Cloud Atlas is a problematic movie.
If you've read the Booker-nominated novel by David Mitchell, you know that it's comprised of six nested storylines reaching from the mid-1800s to a distant post-apocalyptic future where humanity has destroyed itself. In each of the stories, the author illustrates humanity's dangerous will to power, the tendency of the strong to dominate the weak, our never-ending need for more, and he also illustrates how people can fight against it in ways both large and small. Each story stops halfway through and then we start the next story, within which the main character of that story ends up reading or viewing a version of the previous story (but of course they had to stop halfway); then that story stops halfway and we go to the next one, etc. The mid-point is the post-apocalyptic future, and then the stories start to go back in reverse as each character in one story finds the second half of the story set in an earlier time than theirs, and each nested storyline concludes all the way back to the mid-1800s again.
As you can probably tell, it's complicated stuff. The reason this is problematic for the movie is twofold.
First, fans of the book may be upset to learn that in order to fit all six stories even into a nearly three hour movie that doesn't waste a moment, a lot of things had to be cut or compressed, including some scenes that were really very cool in the book. The movie also ditches the nested aspect of the storytelling and instead mixes the different stories and timeframes up at will, skipping from one to the other at opportune moments and attempting to weave them together. As a result, this is an incredibly busy movie. There are important things happening every minute on the screen. You do not have time for a bathroom break. You do not have the luxury of zoning out if you want to understand everything. If you're watching it right, your head has to be absolutely full of this movie.
Second, however, is the problematic probability that if you haven't read the book, you're likely going to have to pay even closer attention to work it all out. The movie tries to show how things are connected (and even goes so far as to invent connections that did not exist in the book, just to really drive things home), but it's not by any means a fluff movie. It has explosions and action and a lot of tension, yes, but if you're not thinking about it almost the whole way through, you're going to lose something.
In addition to these potential problems is the fact that many of the principle actors play multiple roles across the six different stories. This reinforces an idea that's part of the novel's background — namely, that there are characters who are reborn versions of one another, the same soul in different bodies across time, and every time they meet they affect one another. But the movie, by physically connecting some of these people via the same actors, comes across a little strangely because some of the characters played by those same actors are not connected through the rebirth aspect.
Are you confused yet? So are a lot of critics, because so far Cloud Atlas is scoring only 55/100 on Metacritic. I want to fully acknowledge all of the problems I mentioned above (along with the fact that sometimes the cool and authentic language used in the book does not translate well to the spoken voice).
But at the same time, I want to tell you that despite all those problems, anyone who doesn't think this is a good movie probably doesn't know what a good movie can be.
Cloud Atlas, for my money, is almost beyond the scale of good and bad; it's amazing. It's bigger and bolder than I ever imagined. It's less subtle than the book, but it brings out all the book's highest qualities and blends them together in a stunningly ambitious melange of storytelling and morality. It captures the essence of the novel and explodes it across the screen in an array of unique and almost dizzyingly cool set pieces, and it blends all of the different story genres present in the book into a complicated but ultimately coherent set of interweaving tales.
There were moments throughout the entire movie that filled me with emotion, and the use of Timothy Cavendish's story of publishing, extortion, and elder abuse had the audience at my showing laughing out loud as effective comedic relief to break up the soaring spectacles and tense cuts.
Plus, there is one good thing to be said about the actors taking on multiple roles, and that's that you will get to see Hugo Weaving as not only a slave-owning racist, but also as a stone-cold contract killer, an abusive evil (and female) nurse, and in one of the coolest things I've ever seen him do, as the post-apocalyptic Devil himself.
Tom Hanks blends into most of his various roles well — you won't recognize him in some unless you're looking for him — but in others he's very much Tom Hanks. Halle Berry is pretty much Halle Berry in all of her roles, but she does a good job of bringing out her two main characters, the mystery-solving journalist Luisa Rey and the mysterious Meronym at the end of the world. If you're the sort of person who notices actors in movies and thinks about them as their actors and not as their characters, you might get a little tired of those two by the end, but you will never get tired of Hugo Weaving. I mean, I don't know, maybe if you're some sort of witch or something, but other than that.
In the end it's a very difficult movie to give a numerical score. I can't simply balance the good with the bad and call it something in the middle, because for me, in the end, the good vastly overshadowed the bad. If you're willing to spend three hours at the movie thinking and watching closely, you might just come away having seen one of the coolest and most complicated things you've ever seen Hollywood provide with a big budget. Movies like this don't come around every day. Whether you love it or end up hopelessly confused by it, you'll be watching something unique, ambitious, and powerful.
If you've read the Booker-nominated novel by David Mitchell, you know that it's comprised of six nested storylines reaching from the mid-1800s to a distant post-apocalyptic future where humanity has destroyed itself. In each of the stories, the author illustrates humanity's dangerous will to power, the tendency of the strong to dominate the weak, our never-ending need for more, and he also illustrates how people can fight against it in ways both large and small. Each story stops halfway through and then we start the next story, within which the main character of that story ends up reading or viewing a version of the previous story (but of course they had to stop halfway); then that story stops halfway and we go to the next one, etc. The mid-point is the post-apocalyptic future, and then the stories start to go back in reverse as each character in one story finds the second half of the story set in an earlier time than theirs, and each nested storyline concludes all the way back to the mid-1800s again.
As you can probably tell, it's complicated stuff. The reason this is problematic for the movie is twofold.
First, fans of the book may be upset to learn that in order to fit all six stories even into a nearly three hour movie that doesn't waste a moment, a lot of things had to be cut or compressed, including some scenes that were really very cool in the book. The movie also ditches the nested aspect of the storytelling and instead mixes the different stories and timeframes up at will, skipping from one to the other at opportune moments and attempting to weave them together. As a result, this is an incredibly busy movie. There are important things happening every minute on the screen. You do not have time for a bathroom break. You do not have the luxury of zoning out if you want to understand everything. If you're watching it right, your head has to be absolutely full of this movie.
Second, however, is the problematic probability that if you haven't read the book, you're likely going to have to pay even closer attention to work it all out. The movie tries to show how things are connected (and even goes so far as to invent connections that did not exist in the book, just to really drive things home), but it's not by any means a fluff movie. It has explosions and action and a lot of tension, yes, but if you're not thinking about it almost the whole way through, you're going to lose something.
In addition to these potential problems is the fact that many of the principle actors play multiple roles across the six different stories. This reinforces an idea that's part of the novel's background — namely, that there are characters who are reborn versions of one another, the same soul in different bodies across time, and every time they meet they affect one another. But the movie, by physically connecting some of these people via the same actors, comes across a little strangely because some of the characters played by those same actors are not connected through the rebirth aspect.
Are you confused yet? So are a lot of critics, because so far Cloud Atlas is scoring only 55/100 on Metacritic. I want to fully acknowledge all of the problems I mentioned above (along with the fact that sometimes the cool and authentic language used in the book does not translate well to the spoken voice).
But at the same time, I want to tell you that despite all those problems, anyone who doesn't think this is a good movie probably doesn't know what a good movie can be.
Cloud Atlas, for my money, is almost beyond the scale of good and bad; it's amazing. It's bigger and bolder than I ever imagined. It's less subtle than the book, but it brings out all the book's highest qualities and blends them together in a stunningly ambitious melange of storytelling and morality. It captures the essence of the novel and explodes it across the screen in an array of unique and almost dizzyingly cool set pieces, and it blends all of the different story genres present in the book into a complicated but ultimately coherent set of interweaving tales.
There were moments throughout the entire movie that filled me with emotion, and the use of Timothy Cavendish's story of publishing, extortion, and elder abuse had the audience at my showing laughing out loud as effective comedic relief to break up the soaring spectacles and tense cuts.
Plus, there is one good thing to be said about the actors taking on multiple roles, and that's that you will get to see Hugo Weaving as not only a slave-owning racist, but also as a stone-cold contract killer, an abusive evil (and female) nurse, and in one of the coolest things I've ever seen him do, as the post-apocalyptic Devil himself.
Tom Hanks blends into most of his various roles well — you won't recognize him in some unless you're looking for him — but in others he's very much Tom Hanks. Halle Berry is pretty much Halle Berry in all of her roles, but she does a good job of bringing out her two main characters, the mystery-solving journalist Luisa Rey and the mysterious Meronym at the end of the world. If you're the sort of person who notices actors in movies and thinks about them as their actors and not as their characters, you might get a little tired of those two by the end, but you will never get tired of Hugo Weaving. I mean, I don't know, maybe if you're some sort of witch or something, but other than that.
In the end it's a very difficult movie to give a numerical score. I can't simply balance the good with the bad and call it something in the middle, because for me, in the end, the good vastly overshadowed the bad. If you're willing to spend three hours at the movie thinking and watching closely, you might just come away having seen one of the coolest and most complicated things you've ever seen Hollywood provide with a big budget. Movies like this don't come around every day. Whether you love it or end up hopelessly confused by it, you'll be watching something unique, ambitious, and powerful.