Runtime: 2 hours, 52 minutes
Rating: R
Director: Andy Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski
Quick Impressions:
Over the past few days, I’ve been thinking how much I’d enjoy having the Wachowski Siblings over for a Halloween party because—well, I mean, how could that not be interesting? My alma mater required all undergrads to take twelve hours of philosophy, so I’m sure I’d have something to contribute to a discussion (though, let’s face it, if you’ve lured the Wachowski Siblings to your party, it’s really best to let them do the talking while you smile and pass out the shrunken head punch).
To be honest, I went to Cloud Atlas with relatively low expectations. A friend currently reading the book has raved about it and offered to let me borrow it when he’s finished. I’m looking forward to that and willing to believe that the novel is a masterpiece of sorts. But in my experience, it’s far more likely for a book to be a masterpiece than a movie.
Plus what works on the page and what works on the screen are two decidedly different things that overlap all too infrequently. In general, the more complex, burgeoning, and nonlinear the novel, the more likely the film adaptation will be a bloated, bewildering, pretentious, well-meaning train wreck. (And the Wachowskis are not exactly known for concision, self-editing, and restraint.)
But Cloud Atlas surprised me. This is probably the best film I’ve seen all year and certainly the most ambitious. Despite its mixed reviews upon release, Cloud Atlas seems destined to make future critics’ retrospective best lists and eventually achieve the same cult status enjoyed by other initially underrated films like Blade Runner and Bringing Up Baby.
Of course, the film is not without its little failures, but when it succeeds, it succeeds so beautifully, so brilliantly, so poignantly that in an instant, you forgive any shortcomings and missteps. (Or at least, I did.) There’s so much to love about Cloud Atlas.
And if you like Halle Berry and have been waiting a while for her to have another great role in a great film, here it is. Plus Tom Hanks acts—I mean, really acts, not just acts like Tom Hanks. (Don’t get me wrong, Hanks is a great actor, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen him tackle such a challenging role.)
Every year, some random, off-the-wall film with decidedly mixed and often emphatically negative reviews seems to sneak into Best Picture at the Oscars. Usually, I don’t like whatever movie pulls this trick, but this year, I’ve got my fingers and toes crossed hoping that it’s Cloud Atlas.
The Good:
I retained my initial skepticism for some time. Halfway through, by the time I had all the stories straight and realized there weren’t going to be any additional stories, I decided that Cloud Atlas was definitely making a more positive impression than I’d anticipated. But to be honest, until the movie ended by tying everything together so powerfully and eloquently, I’d really watched it assuming that it was all going to devolve into a big, convoluted mess. (The last time I had such a strong suspicion so thoroughly proven wrong by the surprising cohesion of a film’s ending was when I watched the first Pirates
of the Caribbean movie back in 2003.)
The whole time I watched thinking, This will probably be a big mess at the end, but at least this part is good. Oh and this part is good.
However, Cloud Atlas really stunned me by in the final act rising to become something greater than the sum of its parts.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Halle Berry):
Luisa Rey is a wonderful character because you really care about her. That’s astounding considering that there are like a billion other characters in the movie, and Halle Berry herself plays five of them. Berry also gets tons of screentime in the storyline that is chronologically last, but I prefer her as Rey. (In fact, I really liked the other character—I think her name is Meronym) entirely because I liked Luisa Rey so much. (The characters felt a strange connection to each other through the ages, and traces of their past incarnations affected me too, I guess.)
She brings an intensity (that feels strangely relaxed and natural) to every scene, but if I had to pick one moment, I’d call out the scene when she returns (bedraggled) to her apartment and interacts with two separate people in entirely different ways. I haven’t heard anybody talking about Halle Berry for Best Actress, but why not? Who is her competition at this point? The little girl from Beasts of the Southern Wild? (I’m not trying to diminish Quvenzhané Wallis’s performance, by the way. She was fantastic, but there have to be four other nominees, and so many of the other lead actress performances being touted as best have yet to be seen by most people (and in some cases all people)). I think Halle Berry deserves serious consideration for her work here.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Tom Hanks):
Tom Hanks has a great part in this movie. If every actor represents a single soul in its ongoing incarnations (as I assume), then Hanks gets to portray the soul with the most dramatic journey of self-discovery, purgation, and growth. He gets to show tremendous range, but (perhaps ironically), I like him best when he’s playing his most likable, Tom Hanksy role as the sympathetic scientist strangely drawn to Luisa Ray.
I have a feeling that most people are going to prefer him as the post-apocalyptic protagonist Zachry, however. And my husband really loved him as Dermot Hoggins.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (The Wachowski Siblings and Tom Tykwer):
In the past, I’ve been a casual fan of the Wachowski Brothers’ work. I mean, I really liked The Matrix Trilogy (except for the second one and the third one), and I thought they did a great job with their live action Speed Racer, a film unfairly savaged by critics. (I remember at the time people complaining about how weird it was. To them I say, “Have you ever seen the original anime version?” I think the Wachowskis’ Speed Racer is pretty faithful in spirit to its source material. Now you could ask, “But why did we need a live-action Speed Racer movie in 2008?” and I wouldn’t have a good answer for you, but I’ll bet the Wachowskis would, and that’s why I want to invite them over for Halloween.
Anyway, before seeing this film, I was woefully ignorant about the career of its other director, Tom Tykwer. (I didn’t even know how to spell his name correctly until five minutes ago. I’ve been saying Cloud Atlas was directed by The Wachowski Siblings and the other guy.) As it turns out, Tykwer directed Run Lola Run and the “Faubourg-Saint-Denis” segment from Paris, je t’aime. (That’s the one with Natalie Portman, one of my favorites in the movie. Of course, practically all the segments are “one of my favorites” because Paris, je t’aime was my favorite film that year.)
What’s funny is that my three favorite segments in Cloud Atlas were all the ones directed by Tykwer. Meanwhile, my husband’s favorite segments were the three directed by the Wachowski Siblings. (That’s uncanny since we didn’t even know until the credits how they’d split the directing duties, and I didn’t even sort out which segments were done by whom until I got home.) What’s more, my husband and I saw Cloud Atlas with friends, and after the film, I discovered that our friend’s favorite segment was my least favorite and vice-versa.
This is such a beautifully made movie. Every part is so different, yet the film’s final message is so wonderfully cohesive. I truly believe this deserves a nomination for Best Director (though I tend to doubt that it will receive one). You could pick out just about any scene in the movie to justify the nomination. They’re all stunning and all strong, each in a different way.
The trio should also be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. I personally loved the way various characters delivered lines in narration that seemed to be profound quotations from the novel. I’m sure some people probably found this annoying, but it made me want to read the book and offered lots of food for thought.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Ben Whishaw):
As easily as I instinctively rooted for Luisa Rey, I found Robert Frobisher’s character amazingly intense and sweetly tragic. I will admit that because they have similar appearances and often wore lots of make-up, I had trouble distinguishing between Jim Sturgess and Ben Whishaw (who is going to be the new Q in the next Bond film) in most of their incarnations. Whishaw, however, was absolutely outstanding as Robert Frobisher. I liked the way he responded when Jim Broadbent’s character tried to keep him from leaving. The moment in the bathtub is very poignant, as well.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (The Rest of the Supporting Cast):
Okay, I’m not really going to comment on thousands of moments, but I will say that I particularly enjoyed the performances of Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Keith David, James D’Arcy, and Doona Bae. And my husband and I were particularly drawn to David Gyasi as Autura. (And then you have people in less substantial but still well played roles, people like Susan Sarandon and Hugh Grant.) Of all of these, I’d say that only Broadbent has a shot at supporting actor. He’s wonderful in his most sympathetic role and great in the scene when he’s speaking with his brother on the phone. Supporting Actor is such a crowded category, but Whishsaw, Broadbent, D’Arcy, Gyasi, and…You know, I was going to commend the best of the supporting cast, but I find myself needing to list all their names again. The cast is quite solid.
Best Action Sequence:
I loved the chase scene when Hugo Weaving was trying to hunt down Halle Berry and Keith David. Honestly, though most of the characters were quite compelling, Halle Berry’s Luisa Rey was perhaps the most sympathetic. (Or maybe I should say that she was the easiest to sympathize with. From the moment of her introduction, Rey seems trustworthy, honest, determined and likable because of both her integrity and her vulnerability.) To be honest, I would have just as eagerly watched a movie focused exclusively on the Luisa Rey plotline. (For one thing, I loved the way that James D’arcy’s Rufus Sixsmith (whose very name was another highlight of the movie for me) gave that sequence and the one that immediately preceded it in time, a more understandable and immediate connection than many of the other sequences in the film shared.)
Best Scene Visually:
In visual terms, the segments directed by the Wachowski Siblings win (though, of course, it’s not a contest). The obvious standout is the sequence that follows Doona Bae as the mysterious and eventually iconic Sonmi. (I forget which number Sonmi she is, to be honest.) The scenes in Neo Seoul are stunning and have a very Wachowskish look to them. When I say that I liked Tykwer’s scenes the best, I do not mean in any way that I did not like the other scenes. Neo Seoul is dark and sleek and trippy and gorgeous.
Best Scene:
Jim Sturgess has a great moment with Hugo Weaving near the end (and a great moment with David Gyasi near the beginning for that matter), but probably the most resonant single scene is the one in which Doona Bae is shown something that changes her mind (and in so doing, eventually changes many other minds as well).
Funniest Scene/Best Joke:
Overall, the funniest story belongs to Jim Broadbent’s Timothy Cavendish. Of course, there’s nothing funny about his predicament, but his entire storyline is presented with such humor. The moment when Dermot Hoggins guarantees that his book will be a best seller is unexpected and darkly hilarious (though a trifle disturbing). And the entire escape plot is genius, especially what happens in the tavern. Broadbent also gets one of the most intriguing lines in the movie, one that seems like a throwaway joke, a tired pop culture reference that turns out to be a central theme of the movie and foreshadows a pivotal plot point.
The Negatives:
Probably the film’s most glaring flaw is that despite its stated focus on the heart and the soul, it manages to be so paradoxically cerebral. Put another way, Cloud Atlas is nearly three hours long and tells six (apparently) separate stories that dizzingly span time, space, and genre.
Its message may be poignant, soulful, heart-felt and moving, but you can’t share in the beautiful profundity of its ending sequences without first using your brain quite a bit for like two and a half hours. The film is high concept and so intricately plotted that you don’t dare look away. Surprisingly given this complicated set-up, it’s never really dense or hard to follow, but for the first hour or so, it’s really impossible to connect the dots and have the
faintest notion of how all the storylines tie together. And because the film jumps back and forth from story to story constantly, getting invested in any one storyline takes quite a while.
There are going to be people who (perhaps reasonably) refuse to make the time and focus commitment necessary to engage with the film. I am sure that people will get confused and walk out, fall asleep, or zone out before they ever get to a point of understanding.
The movie has something to say, something quite beautiful, cogent, and moving, in fact. But you have to give it a chance to deliver this message through the means it deems necessary. Imagine being approached by a stranger on the street who tells you, “I want to share something with you, so please pay attention. I just need two hours and fifty two minutes of your undivided attention.”
Now imagine that the person approaching you is the director of The Matrix. (Once you imagine that, of course, this exercise becomes literal rather than hypothetical.) Some people just aren’t going to want to commit to watching this movie, and there’s probably nothing that anyone else can do about it.
Another, more superficial problem is the make-up. At times, it’s wonderful. At other times, you feel like you’re watching a high school play where one of the students got a little too zealous with the old-age make up. In some ways, the movie is a little bit like a big budget game of Where’s Waldo. I personally thought it was kind of fun trying to pick out all the actors, but some might reasonably replace the word fun with the words tedious and distracting.
When I learned—several years ago—that Katharine Hepburn played a Chinese peasant in a Pearl S. Buck adaptation, I thought I’d seen the height of ridiculousness when it came to trying to disguise one race as another. But this movie not only uses yellow face but also whiteface. I don’t think I have ever seen a person of color in whiteface before. That’s not exactly a negative. Or is it?
I’m not sure, but it is an oddity for sure. (Though on the plus side, this film has a commendably multi-racial, multi-cultural cast, and wonderfully inclusive message.)
One final complaint. This is perhaps a bit petty, but I personally found the dialect in the scenes set in the furthest future a little off-putting. At first it seemed silly and contrived, but I tried to get past that and finally succeeded. Still, though, I don’t understand why Zachry saw a greenish devil figure muttering at him all the time. I still don’t know completely who that guy was. I thought I had figured it out, but then something happened to make me unsure.
Overall:
I could write one-thousand pages in response to this movie, but instead I’ll simply say this: See Cloud Atlas. If you don’t, you’ll be kicking yourself for it in your next life.