Cloud Atlas (2012) Review

Cloud Atlas is a film so big that two brothers weren’t enough, not only did they have to include another person as director, one of them even had to get sex change to broaden their creative horizon in order to have any hope of pulling this of. Is this the truth? Yes probably, I fell confident this is why Larry is now Lena. Yes.

So what is the massive film about? Well pretty much everything you can imagine, yet maybe not so much at all when you really think about it. The film depicts six different stories at six different points in past present and future with several actors playing reincarnated versions of themselves. Some of the stories are clearly linked when it comes to character relationships or conflicts, though what bind them all together are the themes of action and consequences, revolution, justice and love in particular.

While this in it self is pretty damn ambitious, that was not really what worried me, what worried me the most was that while the Wachowski´s directed three of the timelines, Tykwer directed the other three and that is scary. That basically means half the film is director by one director and the other half by some else, which could cause it to feel very uneven and incoherent, yet somehow they worked it out really well and it flows quite nicely. Despite going from historical drama, to whimsical comedy, to hopeless romance, to dark sci-fi, it manages to feel coherent and keep its tone and that is a really impressive feat. It is also pretty damn impressive that they kept my attention and interest for three hours, and that despite some very bad pacing at times, I was rarely bored with this picture.

The acting in the film is for the most part pretty good, though silly at times. The stand out performance came from Ben Whishaw (also known as Q from Skyfall) who had some of the very best moments in the film. You could say Tom Hanks is the lead of sorts in this film and he had an appearance in every timeline with very different characters, some very good, some very cringe-worthy. One of the most annoying parts of the film was in the post-apocalyptic timeline where they had their own language of sorts, which sounded kind of like Jar Jar Binks from The Phantom Menace, who everyone of course loves..heh, with phrases like tru-tru (meaning truth) and yeah… it was silly to say the least, even though I enjoyed this timeline outside that.

One think that desperately needs to be talked about however is the make-up. The make-up here is actually a good representation of the overall film, it is ambitious and brave, and had a lot of brilliance in it, yet at times it just really does not work and becomes silly. Most notably when dressing Hugo Weaving as a large lady… it looked so silly, however the worst was trying to make white actors look Asian, which honestly just felt offensive as they looked like they were making fun of Asian appearances. In all fairness it is very hard to do for the make-up artist and they did do the best work possible without going to CGI, but sadly it just became laughable.

The films biggest problem however is that, while it is ambitious and ambiguous, it is also kind of empty. It spends three hours of somewhat ambiguousness, yet upon reflecting upon the film I quickly solved the puzzle and realized there really isn’t that much beneath the surface in this film. It is kind of like having a heavily reinforced bank vault protected by armed guards, but with only a 100 dollars inside. There was however one thing that I was unable to quite crack, relation the a birthmark that is seen again and again. I tried to research the meaning of this to see if the idea I had in my head relating to this was correct and it was. According to the book it was correct at least, however the way it has been done in the films coincides with this interpretation which to my understanding is fairly obvious in the book, so why the filmmakers chose to do it this way, neglecting how it is in the book is beyond me.

All the issues I have with the film aside, there is one thing that I thought upon leaving the movie; the filmmakers had kept my interest for through hours through six thematically connected stories and I had been entertained the whole way and that is really important. So while the film may have not fully accomplished its ambition, it was interesting to say the least, it was something very different and you just could help, but admire the ambition, and last, but not least, those three hours went by pretty easily and I had fun despite its many flaws.

3.5/5