I’m sitting here in front of my laptop trying to distill my opinion on Cloud Atlas into around 500 or so words, and that may well be an impossible task.
Cloud Atlas is not a film that fits neatly into a “good” or “bad” category. It doesn’t fit into a particular genre, and it doesn’t conform to anything that can be considered a recognizable formula. I don’t know how to judge it on its artistic merits; I don’t know how to judge it on the levels on which it succeeds or fails.
I find myself only able to judge it based upon the scope of its ambition and the emotions and feelings it intended me to feel, and on that level it is a movie that stands entirely alone.
Good or bad, Cloud Atlas is the most ambitious movie of the 21st century – it may not merit either praise or disdain, but it definitely merits attention.
The movie presents six disparate stories set in six vastly different time periods – the years 1849, 1936, 1974, 2012, 2144, and 2321 – each with varyingly direct and obtuse threads to the other. Likewise, each member of the cast plays multiple roles spanning the various settings.
Tom Hanks plays a scheming 19th century doctor in 1849 and a primitive hunter-gatherer in the post-apocalyptic 2321 setting; Halle Barry portrays an intrepid reporter in 1973 and a German-born Jewish woman in 1936. It’s a wonderful test for the cast; sometimes they pass with flying colors and sometimes they fail miserably, and yet it’s consistently entertaining and engrossing watching them do a backstroke on one lap through the pool before switching to a butterfly on the next.
This is ultimately a testament to the screenplay and the directing (both duties filled by the team of Lana and Andy Wachowski, and Tom Tykwer). Adapting the novel by David Mitchell, the Wachowskis and Tywker have taken what could have been an incomprehensible mess and turned it into a narrative that, while it requires more attention and involvement from an audience than the average movie, is more than coherent.
No small task, considering the fact that some pieces of the film are set up in one time period and not paid off until 400 years later (it sometimes works in reverse, adding a layer of complexity that many films stray away from). For example, Jim Sturgess plays a man in 1849 exposed to the horrors of American slavery and seems internally compelled to act; in 2144 he plays an active fighter in a revolution intended to free enslaved androids in the dystopian Korean metropolis of Neo Seoul.
Then there is the philosophical questions raised throughout the movie, all dealing with the premise that it is not enough to be freed from real or imaginary bonds of slavery – humanity is derived from what we do with that freedom. It’s a movie about determinism, and thanks to the inherent over-the-top and operatic nature of the material, the film is free to put that notion on front street without fear of appearing pretentious.
This movie is pretentious and is well aware of it; it’s a refreshing change of pace, especially considering the Wachowski’s thinly-veiled philosophical subtext in The Matrix series (we knew we were being preached to, and yet the movies insisted that we weren’t; here the filmmakers are free to preach away to their hearts’ content).
As for the technical aspects, the movie is nearly perfect. It is shot beautifully by directors of photography John Toll and Frank Griebe, who ensure that no speck of light is wasted; this team obviously worked closely with the directors to ensure that every shot means something – that there is significance, whether overt or subtle, to be found within each frame of the film, a credit to the movie’s editing as well.
And the performances are magnificent. Hanks goes for it in each role he plays – unfortunately, he’s the only member of the cast who doesn’t catch what he’s grasping for in each go-around. But it’s devilishly fun watching him try.
The real treats of the movie, though, are the great Jim Broadbent and Doona Bae. Broadbent’s turn as a down-on-his luck publisher who’s tricked into admitting himself to an oppressive retirement home is wickedly funny and provides a wonderful release to the sometimes dreary and depressing elements of the other stories.
And Bae is magnificent as Sonmi-451, an android programmed to be a waitress who becomes self-aware and pines for her own freedom, leading her to become a martyr for the cause. It’s a touching performance and a heartbreaking one as she discovers the joy of love and belonging only to have her innocence and wonder ripped from her.
There are equally wonderful performances from Ben Winshaw and James D’Arcy, and even Hugh Grant manages to eat the scenery in ways I never imagined him capable (he plays the chief of a cannibal tribe in the distant future and a despicable energy baron in 1973).
The movie has its lagging moments, sometimes spending too much time in one setting before transitioning to the next, but with a movie this ambitious it’s not even something I can really bring myself to complain about.
High-Def Presentation
I seem to find myself saying this every couple of months, but this is the best high definition presentation I’ve yet seen from the Blu-ray format.
Visually, the 1080p MPEG-4 AVC-encoding is positively arresting. Color temperatures are brilliant (the gorgeous, almost blinding whites of the rocky post-apocalyptic landscape and the deep, somber blues of Neo Seol), grain is at an absolute minimum, and detail is extraordinary.
The sound treatment is equally magnificent, as the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track utilizes every bit of space that the format allows, creating an immersive experience unlike any other. During the 1849 sequence, set largely on a ship at sea, there is an ever-present but never distracting background noise of the waves outside the ship and the tolls of the vessel’s bells that add to the realism of the auditory experience.
The action sequences (mainly in the two future settings) take full advantage of the center and rear speakers, providing a bombastic, exciting atmosphere, while the subtle overlaying of the music keeps the tension ratcheting upward.
Beyond the Feature
As with most reviews in recent memory, this set fails the supplemental test as Warner Bros. has dropped the ball on the bonus features.
All we get is a handful of 5-10 minute mini-docs studying the acting, the story construction and making-of adventures all too quickly. It’s as if the after-market approach to every movie is, “It’s a Blu-ray; we have to have bonus features, so slap together whatever footage we didn’t use in the promotional materials.”
The disc’s focus points (which can be viewed as a single feature or individually) are:
- A Film Like No Other (7 min)
- Everything is Connected (8 min)
- The Impossible Adaptation (9 min)
- The Essence of Acting (7 min)
- Spaceships, Slaves, and Sextets (8 min)
- The Bold Science Fiction of Cloud Atlas (7 min)
- Eternal Recurrence: Love, Life, and Longing in Cloud Atlas (8 min)
The focus points aren’t bad, but they are lacking – a film this big in scope should have at least had an hour-long feature just on the production phase. Frankly, a commentary track wouldn’t have hurt my feelings either.
All bonus features are presented in high definition.
At the end of the day, Cloud Atlas is thought-provoking, ambitious, and imaginative. I don’t know that I can truly call it a great film, nor can I call it a terrible one.
In this instance, the innovations in both storytelling technique and visual effects are the achievements to be trumpeted when it comes to this movie. It doesn’t accomplish everything it sets out to do, but the fact that it even tries when so many other movies are content to present $100 million paint-by-numbers coloring books masquerading as films is something to be lionized.
Many times, we find ourselves saying that films will be called great 100 years from now. I don’t know what people will think of this movie’s content or its message in a century’s time, but I do know that they’ll remember it as one of the most ambitious cinematic undertakings of its time.
It was largely ignored by audiences upon its release last year, but I have a feeling that this movie will someday build a legacy that may outlast those of the films we hold aloft as classics today.
Cloud Atlas is a film that I could (and probably will) watch hundreds of times. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to pin down whether or not it’s a good movie or a bad movie – but I do know that I’ll be thinking about it and appreciating the questions it poses.
Isn’t that the ultimate goal of all works or art?
Shop for Cloud Atlas on Blu-ray and DVD combo for a discounted price at Amazon.com (May 14, 2013 release date).
