A film of great ambition and scope, Cloud Atlas, an adaptation of David Mitchell’s popular novel, is a rousing tale of love, kindness, and the greater good. Didn’t like the book? Then stay away: the film amplifies the novel’s themes of love and (im)mortality tenfold. If you didn’t buy it in the book, you won’t buy it in the film. This is a story so big that it took two directorial forces to oversee the project. On the one hand, the Wachowskis (brother Andy and sister Lana, best known for their Matrix movies) bring their particular SF aesthetic to the film, while Germany’s Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, Heaven) injects his parts of the story with alternately pleasant frivolity and dramatic weight, as appropriate. Altogether the film makes for a sensory journey across time and space that is at times very funny and at others devastating.
As those who have read the book will know, Cloud Atlas is much concerned with various intersecting plotlines. The film does the same, but does not follow the book’s order and structure to a point; for instance, the film introduces a bookending device that is not in the book, and, for the film, it works. The cast – mainly Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Ben Whishaw, Doona Bae and Hugh Grant – reappear in different shapes and guises throughout the film. Hanks, for example, is a physician on a ship exploring the Pacific islands in one story, but a gangster-turned-writer in another and later again he’s a post-apocalyptic island inhabitant. There is no attempt to disguise the actors; they appear in make-up as different characters, but it’s mostly always clear who we are looking at. Depending on whether you’re fine with this set-up, the film either works or becomes ridiculous. I align myself with the former position.
Cloud Atlas tells the stories of Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) who bears witness to inequality and exploitation in the Pacific and of an elderly publisher (Jim Broadbent) with bad debt who ends up in his worst nightmare. There is also futuristic tale set in consumer-driven Neo-Seoul, where a fabricant (Doona Bae) comes to consciousness. And in the 1970s, a reporter (Halle Berry) investigates large-scale corporate criminal activity that threatens her life. A personal favourite is the story of a young composer, Frobischer (Ben Whishaw), who as the assistant to acclaimed Scottish composer Vyvyan Ayrs (Broadbent again) begins to develop his own piece of music, which he calls the “Cloud Atlas Sextet”. It is a musical motif that accompanies much of the film.
With its emphasis on a collective humanity throughout the ages, I wasn’t bowled over by the film's spiritual truths, but I was overwhelmed by the characters’ commitment to these truths. In the end, Cloud Atlas – its very existence logistically and industrially mind boggling – is bold, theme driven storytelling that flat-out ignores the often popular cynical disdain for cinematic depictions of sentiment and goodness. Indeed, Cloud Atlas shows the latter forces as integral for the continuation of the species. Also, acts of revolution can be brought about through kindness and human engagement much more so than statistical analysis and mind-numbing Powerpoint presentations.
As those who have read the book will know, Cloud Atlas is much concerned with various intersecting plotlines. The film does the same, but does not follow the book’s order and structure to a point; for instance, the film introduces a bookending device that is not in the book, and, for the film, it works. The cast – mainly Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Ben Whishaw, Doona Bae and Hugh Grant – reappear in different shapes and guises throughout the film. Hanks, for example, is a physician on a ship exploring the Pacific islands in one story, but a gangster-turned-writer in another and later again he’s a post-apocalyptic island inhabitant. There is no attempt to disguise the actors; they appear in make-up as different characters, but it’s mostly always clear who we are looking at. Depending on whether you’re fine with this set-up, the film either works or becomes ridiculous. I align myself with the former position.
Cloud Atlas tells the stories of Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) who bears witness to inequality and exploitation in the Pacific and of an elderly publisher (Jim Broadbent) with bad debt who ends up in his worst nightmare. There is also futuristic tale set in consumer-driven Neo-Seoul, where a fabricant (Doona Bae) comes to consciousness. And in the 1970s, a reporter (Halle Berry) investigates large-scale corporate criminal activity that threatens her life. A personal favourite is the story of a young composer, Frobischer (Ben Whishaw), who as the assistant to acclaimed Scottish composer Vyvyan Ayrs (Broadbent again) begins to develop his own piece of music, which he calls the “Cloud Atlas Sextet”. It is a musical motif that accompanies much of the film.
With its emphasis on a collective humanity throughout the ages, I wasn’t bowled over by the film's spiritual truths, but I was overwhelmed by the characters’ commitment to these truths. In the end, Cloud Atlas – its very existence logistically and industrially mind boggling – is bold, theme driven storytelling that flat-out ignores the often popular cynical disdain for cinematic depictions of sentiment and goodness. Indeed, Cloud Atlas shows the latter forces as integral for the continuation of the species. Also, acts of revolution can be brought about through kindness and human engagement much more so than statistical analysis and mind-numbing Powerpoint presentations.
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