Aylmer to Zazzoo and Beyond: Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas
(2012)
Drama | Mystery | Sci-Fi
172 min.

Rated: R violence, language, sexuality/nudity and some drug use | What parents need to know
Grade: C+

Directors: Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski
Writers: David Mitchell (novel), Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, Tom Tykwer
(written for the screen)
Stars: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Broadbent, Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant | See full cast and crew

Cloud Atlas explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present and the future. Action, mystery and romance weave dramatically through the story as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero and a single act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution in the distant future. Each member of the ensemble appears in multiple roles as the stories move through time. -- (C) Warner Bros.

Cloud Atlas is an epic adventure drama movie written and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer. It was adapted from the 2004 novel of the same name by David Mitchell. With a budget of $102 million (financed by independent sources; Warner Bros also paid $15 million to acquire the film's North American rights), Cloud Atlas is one of the most expensive independent films of all time.

After their directing debut in 1996 with Bound, the ever ambitious Wachowskis have been blowing minds (or at least trying to) since they hit the 'Big Time' with their second film The Matrix. Well, they're back...and their intentions are the same in Cloud Atlas. The film premiered Sept. 9th, 2012 at the 37th Toronto International Film Festival, where at its conclusion it received a 10-minute standing ovation. Since it's official opening, Sept. 26, the reviews have been mixed -- some say it's an awe-inspiring work of visual and emotional daring, while others say it's muddled, pretentious, and overlong.

Cloud Atlas is a series of interconnected vignettes that follows a variety of characters across centuries. The premise is that seemingly small actions and events have monumental repercussions. While the novel tells the stories in chronological order the filmmakers have decided to jump all over the map, flashing back and flashing forward with total abandon. The pundits agree that Cloud Atlas is a singular film, but while some are thrilled by its monumental scope and big ideas, others say it's too undisciplined and disjointed to realize its outsized aims. Here is a sampling of what the critics are saying:
Yeas

"one of the most ambitious films ever made"... "Even as I was watching Cloud Atlas the first time, I knew I would need to see it again. Now that I've seen it the second time, I know I'd like to see it a third time...I think you will want to see this daring and visionary film...I was never, ever bored by Cloud Atlas. On my second viewing, I gave up any attempt to work out the logical connections between the segments, stories and characters." - Four out of four stars, Roger Ebert

"an intense three-hour mental workout rewarded with a big emotional payoff. [...] One's attention must be engaged at all times as the mosaic triggers an infinite range of potentially profound personal responses." - Variety

"It is so full of passion and heart and empathy that it feels completely unlike any other modern film in its range either measured through scope of budget or sweep of action. - MSN Movies, James Rocchi

"one of the year’s most important movies". - The Daily Beast

"utterly, wonderfully epic". - Inside Movies

"You will have to decide for yourself whether it works. It’s that kind of picture. [...] Is this the stuff of Oscars? Who knows? Is it a force to be reckoned with in the coming months? Absolutely." - Michael Cieply of The New York Times

Nays

"I'll grant that the film has many layers. All of them are terrible". - New York Post, Kyle Smith

"unique and totally unparalleled disaster"..."[its] badness is fundamental, an essential aspect of the concept and its execution that I suspect is impossible to remedy or rectify". - Slant Magazine reviewer Calum Marsh

"The result is maddening, exasperating, occasionally exhilarating -- and mostly boring". - Christian Science Monitor, Peter Rainer

"Sumptuous visuals and audacious acting, but the quasi-profound message of cosmic connectedness isn't worth all the trouble". - Rafer Guzman, Newsday

"The most disappointing film of the year". - Boston Phoenix, Peter Keough

"Men play women. Women play men. Blacks play whites. An Asian plays a freckled Victorian. Bad accents flourish. And Hugo Weaving, whether he's a he, she, or ridiculous hoodoo leprechaun, is always the villain". - Metro Times (Detroit, MI), Jeff Meyers

"At 163 minutes, Cloud Atlas carries all the marks of a giant folly, and those unfamiliar with the book will be baffled." - The Guardian

Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 60% of critics have given Cloud Atlas a "fresh" rating based on 158 reviews, with an average of 6.5/10. The consensus at the site from the collected reviews is "Its sprawling, ambitious blend of thought-provoking narrative and eye-catching visuals will prove too unwieldy for some, but the sheer size and scope of Cloud Atlas are all but impossible to ignore".

Over at Metacritic the film's current score is 55 out of 100, indicating 'mixed to average' reviews.

Now what have I said in the past? If the Film Festival circuit and critics faun over a film and call it 'important'...beware of your money and time.

Cloud Atlas is indeed epic in scope and style with a stellar cast but not much else. Yes, Cloud Atlas is an epic alright...an epic mess that takes itself way to seriously!

The trailer is far more interesting than the movie itself which is tortuously long at 2 hours and 52 minuets. Each actor takes on multiple roles, playing each gender and various ages. While an interesting proposition it is distracting, drawing undue attention to itself becoming a guessing game of who is that behind the wigs and makeup. (Lana Wachowski was born Laurence "Larry" Wachowski, ya' think maybe that had something to do with the role assignments? In an interview she/he confessed proudly that, in fact, it did.)

Bad makeup and accents abound and as the actors attempt to disguise their voices from one character to their next, it harder and harder to understand their dialogue them making the film even more difficult to follow. Then there is the post apocalyptic dialect that is so artificial and annoying, it doesn't work, and I can't let them get away with one of my pet peeves, sutpididty. I'll give just two examples out of many:

1 - Hanks is carrying a child in his arms and is confronted by savages on horseback out to kill the both of them. Facing the horsemen just yards away, he runs and miraculously can out run the horses child in arms for what seems like a mile or more.

2 - The gay lovers in a china shop start breaking the china and figurines at first by throwing them on the floor but progress to tossing them in the air. Suddenly the room is raining down pieces of china.

I was a bit generous in my grading of this film because it is at times bold and inventive and beautiful but the problem is none of those qualities survives the length of the film. Honestly, I think the only viewers that will 'love' this film would have to be hardcore fans of the novel.

The Plot

Well in all reality there is no plot but here are the six fables:

1 - In the 1840s on a voyage through the Pacific Islands, a young American (Jim Sturgess) falls prey to a scheming doctor (Tom Hanks) who is poisoning him slowly to get at his gold but is saved by the efforts of a stowaway slave (David Gyasi).

2 - In the 1930s, an ambitious English youth (Ben Whishaw), on his musical quest for fame, is hired as a musical scribe to a crotchety composer (Jim Broadbent).

3 - In the 1970s, an investigative reporter (Halle Berry), working in San Francisco, is tipped off by a scientist uncovering the truth about a nuclear power plant and soon finds life her life in jeopardy.

4 - In the present day, an unscrupulous London publisher (Broadbent) is confined to an old-folk’s home by his brother (Grant).

5 - In 2144, in the glittering city of Neo-Seoul, a female fabricant (Doona Bae) is cloned to work in the food industry but when she is show her fate rises up against the system that bred her.

6 - Finally, a post apocalyptic primitive forest dwelling tribe, surviving on an island "106 winters after the Fall”, are visited by a superior people, who arrive in a sort of hovercraft/aqua-spacecraft that glides across the ocean.

Now, if you are the type who draws a conclusion as to how the smooth vessel from fable #6 echoes the creaky, tall ship of fable #1, then perhaps Cloud Atlas may be just your kind of movie. Fans, like critic Roger Ebert, will find a need to see the film over and over, in order to savor the plethora of connecting links through time and their New Age, shall we say, beauty and wisdom yadda, yadda, yadda.

The modern publisher, in fable #4, while on the train is reading a manuscript subtitled “A Luisa Rey Mystery,” and Luisa Rey is the name of the California reporter from fable #3 and she had a little friend, an inquisitive kid, in her apartment building who, we now realize, has grown up to be a writer of mysteries and uses her name for his heroine, and the nuclear whistle-blower who assisted her, was first seen, decades before, in bed with the young musician, and so on, ad infinitum...or ad nauseam (if you're seeing it like me).

This interweaving narrative is the author Mitchell’s, however as I noted earlier, his story lines in the book follow one another in chronological order but in the film, thanks to the the Wachowskis and Tykwer, they are tangled like a plate of lo mien noodles, with the 'genius' idea that there would be no loitering in any one period of time or on any singular character from any of the six fables. The tone of the film gets the same treatment, we flip flop from the farce and whimsy of old folks escaping from a prison like retirement home, to the glittering, sterile, severity of Neo-Seoul, an Orwellian utopia of corporate conformism. This Wachowskis’ created world, like that of the Matrix series, is an oppressive society where every character must, without fail, regardless of circumstances, maintain an emotionless poker face.

The morphing of actors becomes sort of a cruel joke on Jim Sturgess, whose eyes and features have been rediculously reshaped to make him look Asian, the brave and noble Hae-Joo Chang. Changing a cacausian face to look Asian is an iffy proposition whenever it is tried. It usually fails and it sure as heck didn’t work for Mr. Sturgess, it creeps beyond an embarrassing makeup job into the realm of insult. When actors criss-cross continents, centuries and races as Tykwer and the Wachowskis have demanded of their cast there is often a price to be paid.

Hanks, early on, is a grizzeled old shaman from the primative future covered in scars and tattoos, he later appears with a tacky beard, a gold chain and a bad accent as a vengful Irish writer, who throws a cocky, pompus critic off of a balcony at a party.

Hugo Weaving has been seen in drag before and as a drag queen daddy in Pricilla Queen of the Desert he was 'fabulous!' and he's at it again in Cloud Atlas as a busty, menacing, no nonsence nurse Noakes.

Granted, some of these transformations work and are fun but the problem with most of these morphings, regardless of their bold conception or how eagerly they were played, the inevitability is that they draw attention to themselves. When the credits roll and reveal all the roles, no matter how brief, that each of the actors played there were incredulous laughs, hoots and applause from the audience, admttedly, some surprized me. There is Jim Broadbent, for example, in the background in a scene clad in white sci-fi robes that you simply would never have noticed. Your headline actors also playing extras, it's a clever gimmick but at best is still a distraction from the film itself.

Cloud Atlas as a whole should (none of the fable segments would stand alone as as a viable fim on in its own merrit), and perhaps could, be made into a good, possibly great film, but this is a muddled mess.

Cast