As a film, Cloud Atlas is quite likely as ambitious as any you’ll ever see. Lana and Andy Wachowski, the creative minds who brought us The Matrix and its sequels all those years ago, have crafted another epic that’s thoughtful, meticulously detailed, and full of mostly memorable cast-against-type performances from its A-list cast.
Their film is also dauntingly long and frustratingly difficult to follow. By the time it’s done you might very well find yourself breath taken by what you’ve seen as well as not wholly able to explain it. If that does turn out to be the case, don’t worry. You won’t be the only one.
Based on the 2004 novel of the same name by British author David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas endeavors to tell six separate stories occurring in the past, present, and future. In 1849, a young lawyer (Jim Sturgess, Across the Universe) working for a slave trader befriends a slave while on the crossover to America; in 1939, a young, idealistic musician (Ben Whishaw) lives and works with an aged master composer while trying to complete his own compositional masterwork; in 1975, a reporter (Halle Berry) investigates the safety of a nuclear power plant and the company trying to cover up the plant’s defects; in 2012, a book publisher (Jim Broadbent) on the run from a gangster’s minions finds himself in even worse trouble when he gets trapped in a home for the elderly; in 2144, a “fabricant” (clone) tells her story to an archivist prior to her execution for leading a rebellion; and 150 years after “The Fall”, a primitive tribesman (Tom Hanks), haunted by visions of a demon (Hugo Weaving) leads a technologically-advanced stranger up a sacred mountaintop in search of a lost relic.
Sound like a lot to keep up with? It is, and of course, that’s just the beginning.
The tagline for the film, “Everything is Connected”, is implied from the outset by clues placed everywhere in the production, the same birthmark showing up on different characters living in different times, for example. Additionally, each of the actors in the ensemble plays multiple roles in the film, sometimes playing different genders and ethnicities aided by make up and prosthetics. Lives run parallel, struggles against oppression and persecution are revisited, decisions have unforeseen consequences and lessons go unlearned as humanity fails to evolve. It’s all really heady, dense stuff, occasionally punctuated by a car chase, a gun battle, or a madcap escape. Trying to figure out how it all ties together logically is something that’s more likely to give you a headache than it is to make the film more enjoyable.
Herein lies the problem. The Wachowskis, along with third-credited director Tom Tykwer, undertook to adapt into a film a book that many literary critics declared unfilmable due to its complexity, and rightly so. In response to that challenge, they have delivered an opus, a work of cinematic art that makes no attempt to be accessible or to cater to the masses’ taste for cinematic art. In other words, it seems as though they didn’t care if audiences would “get it” or not — they were going to see their vision realized, and challenge viewers to step up their game and keep up. There’s something extremely admirable in that kind of ambition, especially when those who have it are as gifted as these creators are at crafting compelling visuals and telling great stories. The Matrix wasn’t a fluke, folks, and Speed Racer was an aberration. The Wachowskis know what they’re doing.
But there also lies within that kind of ambition a certain pretentiousness, and the potential to create a work so smug in its own cleverness and ingenuity that it fails to recognize its shortcomings. In this case, those shortcomings are the film’s ponderous length – 2 hours and 44 minutes – and its tendency to beat audiences over the head with the same idea over and over again while not really explaining anything. After the first hour and a half, you may find yourself thinking, “Yeah, okay, I get it. It’s all connected. Now just tell me how and why.” And they never do.
Of the different performers involved here, Jim Broadbent definitely gets to have the most fun, and Ben Whishaw shines in what is the most romantic of the stories told. Halle Berry and Jim Sturgess fall in the middle of the spectrum – they turn in solid, if unspectacular performances. At the other extreme, Hanks, oddly enough, seems to be the most limited member of this group of talent. The further away from “himself” he gets with his characters, and the more makeup and/or prosthetics he obscures himself under, the less convincing and more cartoonish he becomes. It’s a rare thing when a two-time Oscar winner like Hanks can be seen as the weakest link in the chain.
But that fits, as it’s also a rare thing when a film can be so breathtakingly bold in its vision, so thoughtful and challenging in its storytelling, and yet in the end be less than satisfying.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
Cloud Atlas
Starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, James D’Arcy, Xun Zhou, Keith David and David Gyasi, with Susan Sarandon and Hugh Grant. Directed by Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, and Andy Wachowski.
Running Time: 164 minutes
Rated R for violence, language, sexuality/nudity and some drug use.