There are five movies that I will defend to my death; Her, Where the Wild Things Are, The Life Aquatic, Magnolia, and Cloud Atlas. For some reason I have yet to find someone who loves the collaborative film from Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis as much as I do, so it probably warrants an explanation. For those of you unfamiliar with Cloud Atlas, it is a series of interconnected stories made to demonstrate the ripple effect, or the influence one person can have across time. It begins with Adam Ewing, a lawyer travelling across the Pacific, moving on to composer Robert Frobisher as he works on creating his masterpiece sextet, then a thriller about a journalist investigating a murder's connection to a nuclear power plant, on to a comedic segment about a publisher trapped in a nursing home, then a clone named Sonmi-451 who sparks a rebellion in futuristic Korea, finally ending with the story of a tribe of primitive people in a post-apocalyptic Hawaii. I had read the source material (a novel of the same name by famed author David Mitchell) years before the movie came out, and completely fell in love. But when it ended, I was left with one final thought: this thing is incredible, but there's no way it could ever translate to film. There are too many moving parts, too many characters with too many inner thoughts and motives, how could that ever be represented in a way that works while staying true to the text? It's a colossal task, but the combination of Lana and Andy Wachowski's sci-fi genius with Tykwer's visual appeal work together to create something truly beautiful (though really, the bulk of the beauty rests on Tykwer's shoulders).
Explaining the plot through text makes it seem overly and deliberately convoluted, but on screen there is a beautiful continuity to the whole film. The six stories interlock like pieces of a puzzle, each one containing parts of the others, finally coming together to make a moving statement on what it means to be human. There are literal connectors; every protagonist shares a small birthmark in the shape of a comet, sets and props are shared, each story has a character reading a journal, book, or video from the previous era, which in turns affects the next storyline, and of course, actors are reused and recycled in a sometimes touching, sometimes gimmicky, sometimes left-footed way. |
Admittedly, there are a lot of flaws, but I think these flaws are almost entirely in the Wachowski's segments. They directed The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing (which is actually fantastic, so I will get to it later), An Orison of Sonmi-451, and Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After. While An Orison of Sonmi-451 was slammed by critics and twitter fiends alike for the "racist" monolid prosthetics given to white actors, I don't think that's the real problem at hand. I'm not sure if there was any way around it, but the excessive CGI used to create Neo-Seoul takes away the simplistic beauty seen in the Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing (pictured above, as the titular character walks across a beach). Sometimes less is more, and the Wachowskis aren't known for their visual restraint. Then comes Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After. Realistically, language will undergo a few changes as time goes on, but even in the book I found the slang distracting and laborious. And even if we set the dialogue aside and consider it a bit of realism injected into the fantasy, I have to lodge a complaint against America's most trusted man: Tom Hanks. There was once a time when he was captivating onscreen, dramatically describing why he loved an opera in Philadelphia, crying after his lost friend in Cast Away, or meeting his son for the first time in Forrest Gump, but now, dear god, he is the dead weight that drags down the last segment of the movie. Really, he seems to take away from every scene he appears in over the course of the movie, and perhaps it's no coincidence that my favorite storyline includes him for less than five minutes.
Those are my few complaints, because for the most part, I think the other four stories are outstanding, both as parts of an ensemble and stand-alone pieces. My personal favorite is Letters from Zedelghem (dir. Tom Tykwer), the story of a bisexual composer named Robert Frobisher's struggle to create his masterpiece sextet told through a series of letters to his lover Sixsmith. In one scene (embedded below) narrated by multiple protagonists from their respective eras, Sixsmith has a dream where he and Frobisher are reunited in a china shop, and the way Tykwer plays with time and fragility is magical to watch. It's a love story crafted in a matter of minutes, and yet it physically hurts to watch it end in the way it does. Considering that Sixsmith and Frobisher, or rather James D'arcy and Ben Whishaw, share very little sceen time together, it's a true testament to their acting abilities. This story line is also where we are formally introduced to the film's theme: The Cloud Atlas Sextet. The swelling and fading music is bent to fit so many situations and emotions that its versatility is almost as impressive as its sound.
In short, Cloud Atlas is completely unique, visually and emotionally unlike anything that came before it. One one hand I can't be too surprised at the fact that many critics named it the worst film of 2012- most audience members tend to lean towards more easily-digested entertainment- but on the other hand, the greatest films are those who aren't afraid to explore new ideas, delve into the human condition and turn it inside out. So while this movie will go down as a box office flop and perhaps never gain mass appeal, I firmly believe that in time, it will at least become a cult classic, because it’s just too good to go unappreciated. For the time being, I will love and believe in it, and leave you with a final thought from Isaac Sachs: "Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the Theory of Relativity and Principles of Uncertainty: phenomenon that determine the course of our lives."
Those are my few complaints, because for the most part, I think the other four stories are outstanding, both as parts of an ensemble and stand-alone pieces. My personal favorite is Letters from Zedelghem (dir. Tom Tykwer), the story of a bisexual composer named Robert Frobisher's struggle to create his masterpiece sextet told through a series of letters to his lover Sixsmith. In one scene (embedded below) narrated by multiple protagonists from their respective eras, Sixsmith has a dream where he and Frobisher are reunited in a china shop, and the way Tykwer plays with time and fragility is magical to watch. It's a love story crafted in a matter of minutes, and yet it physically hurts to watch it end in the way it does. Considering that Sixsmith and Frobisher, or rather James D'arcy and Ben Whishaw, share very little sceen time together, it's a true testament to their acting abilities. This story line is also where we are formally introduced to the film's theme: The Cloud Atlas Sextet. The swelling and fading music is bent to fit so many situations and emotions that its versatility is almost as impressive as its sound.
In short, Cloud Atlas is completely unique, visually and emotionally unlike anything that came before it. One one hand I can't be too surprised at the fact that many critics named it the worst film of 2012- most audience members tend to lean towards more easily-digested entertainment- but on the other hand, the greatest films are those who aren't afraid to explore new ideas, delve into the human condition and turn it inside out. So while this movie will go down as a box office flop and perhaps never gain mass appeal, I firmly believe that in time, it will at least become a cult classic, because it’s just too good to go unappreciated. For the time being, I will love and believe in it, and leave you with a final thought from Isaac Sachs: "Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the Theory of Relativity and Principles of Uncertainty: phenomenon that determine the course of our lives."