There
is no doubt that Cloud Atlas is quite
possibly the most ambitious movie made in the last decade. It takes more than ambition, however, to make
a film that can match up with the size and scope necessary to make this truly
memorable.
Based
on the 2004 novel of the same name by David Mitchell, the film contains six separate
stories, spanning across six different time periods that are all connected to
each other. The six stories are as follows:
an American lawyer named Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess), who while journeying the
Pacific Islands in 1849, tries to help a runaway slave while suffering from a
mysterious illness; aspiring musician Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) works as
an assistant to the world renowned composer Vyvyan Ayrs (Jim Broadbent) in 1936
Europe; gossip columnist Luisa Rey
(Halle Berry) investigates a dangerous conspiracy at a nuclear power plant in
1973 San Francisco; opportunistic publisher Timothy Cavendish finds himself
trapped in the nursing home from hell in present day England; Sonmi~451 (Doona
Bae), a genetically engineered clone, tells the story of her escape from a life
of servitude in the dictatorial society of 2144 Neo Seoul; and primitive
tribesman Zachry’s (Tom Hanks) life threatening and life-altering journey with
the enigmatic Meronym in a post-apocalyptic society (dated “106 Winters after The
Fall” but listed in the credits as the year 2321).
As
you may already be aware, the leading actors play several different characters throughout
the six stories in an additional effort to link the tales to each other. For example, throughout the movie Tom Hanks
plays a mysterious doctor, a hotel manager, a scientist, a hot-headed gangster,
an actor, and a primitive tribesman. The
rest of the principal cast all have a similar set of roles to fill that vary in
size and quality. While this is certainly
a fascinating concept in theory, it might also very well be the movie’s biggest
problem. The Wachowski’s seem to be so
focused on having their actors involved in as many of the stories as possible
that several of the roles are dreadfully miscast. Perhaps the most glaring example is during
the Sonmi~451 story in which the British Jim Sturgess plays the rebellion
commander Hae-Joo Chang. There are also
certain points where Halle Berry plays a Jewish woman, Doona Bae a white woman,
and Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving and Hugh Grant all trying to pass as Asians (the
only reason they’re not as noticeable as Sturgess is because their parts in
this particular story are much smaller). At some point it also seems that the make-up
artists ran out of ideas to help the audience distinguish the actor’s
individual roles and as a result some of them can get quite embarrassing with
them often going into default mode and simply giving them large prosthetic
noses and presumably calling it a day.
While
some liberties have naturally been taken with the source material, there is one
difference in particular that’s pretty hard to ignore. In the book, the way Mitchell would tell each
of the stories is that you would read about halfway through each narrative
before it’s interrupted by a cliffhanger and you would move on and start the
next one. The cycle continues until you
get to the last story which, unlike the rest of them goes from beginning to end
uninterrupted. You would then continue
to where you left off on the previous story and when you conclude with that
tale, you finish off the story you were reading before until you make your way
back to where you started. In the movie
however, the Wachowskis have instead opted to spend no more than five minutes
of screen time at a time on each story before abruptly cutting away to the next
one. The problem with this is (at least
for me anyway), is that with so little time spent on each narrative it becomes
difficult to get emotionally invested in any of them and I suspect that if I hadn’t
already read the book beforehand I would’ve had an even harder time keeping up
with what’s going on. After about the
first hour, I eventually got used to it but I still found myself preferring the
book.
While
the Wachowskis make a valiant effort, the finished product is just slightly off
the mark. However, it’s not without its
truly beautiful moments (such as Jim Sturgess performance as Adam Ewing and Tom
Hanks’ role as Zachry being some of the best work he has done in years) that
prove it’s worth watching and reading at least once. I get the feeling this will be one of those
films that I’ll need to watch at least a couple of more times to truly
appreciate but the first time has not been too bad either.
Grade:
B-
