CLOUD ATLAS

Cloud Atlas (2012)

Grade: B

Starring: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, Hugo Weaving, James D’Arcy, Hugh Grant, Keith David, David Gyasi, Zhou Xun and Susan Sarandon

Premise: People in different places and eras experience love and loss, sickness, tragedy, ecstasy and self-awareness while the same spirit runs through them all.

Rated R for strong bloody violence, language (including racial slurs), sexuality and nudity, and some disturbing images

One of the most polarizing films of last year, Cloud Atlas is one heck of a movie. To watch. To think about. To critique. To review. I’m actually quite proud of that premise I came up with two lines above—that’s a very vague and succinct but not inaccurate nutshell description of this nearly 3-hour epic, which is based on a famously-crafted 2004 novel by author David Mitchell. This film, which features thirteen different actors donning different accents, costumes, looks, ages, characters and genders in different storylines that span centuries, contains, in order, a period epic, a costume drama, a paranoid conspiracy thriller, a crackling modern-day satire, a futuristic sci-fi allegory, and a dramatic postapocalyptic saga.

I’ve taken a peek at Mitchell’s novel, which goes by the same mysteriously catchy moniker, and it’s an impressive achievement. Each storyline is written from a different point of view, features a different style of writing, and feature completely different characters. The writing-no matter the story-is dense, sophisticated, keep-up-or-go-home prose. And despite these wide-ranging tales, it contains symbols, patterns, metaphors and concurrent themes on humanity and its essence, some of which are subtle and some are not.

The trio who sought to bring this towering but offbeat novel to the screen features two people who already created one of the most original and lasting spectacle movies of all time. Andy and Lana Wachowski (formerly Andy’s brother Larry, having undergone a successful sex change) were the writers and directors of The Matrix, the special effects bonanza that tore apart the box office and changed action effects forever in 1999. Of course, packing on the religious metaphors for two melodramatic sequels forever soured, in most people’s minds, the impact of that original film. Here, they team with writer/sometime-composer Tom Tykwer to adapt Mitchell’s steep novel.

As the late Roger Ebert wrote in his glowing review of Cloud Atlas (he called it “a daring and visionary film…one of the most ambitious films ever made”) it’s nigh impossible to give a specific, accurate, meaningful plot synopsis for this movie. The stories, and even the characters, are barely even the point here. I believe what the movie teaches about enlightenment, love, tragedy, and trust are what really count. But, to give you some idea…

1)      Aboard a slave ship in the remote South Pacific in 1850, a young American lawyer (Jim Sturgess) saves the life of a native islander stowaway (David Gyasi) and recounts his experiences in a diary, even after he falls gravely ill with what the ship doctor (Tom Hanks) says is a possibly terminal bug.

2)      The lawyer’s later-published diary is read in 1931 by a young, lonely, bisexual musician (Ben Whishaw), who, while serving as an apprentice to an old, famous composer (Jim Broadbent), is so inspired by the diary’s passages of melancholy, loneliness and love that he writes a famous musical piece called “The Cloud Atlas Sextet”.

3)      In 1975, a crusading journalist (Halle Berry) is given a tip by an elderly stranger (James D’Arcy, playing both the young and old versions of the aforementioned musician’s gay lover) that a local nuclear power plant is unsafe and possibly very harmful to the environment. However, the plant’s CEO (Hugh Grant) will go to any lengths to stop this information leaking.

4)       In the modern day, a publisher (Jim Broadbent) strikes it rich when one of his clients goes bananas and kills a man, spiking the sales of the man’s published book. However, the man’s thuggish relatives threaten the publisher to the point that he seeks refuge in what his brother (Hugh Grant) claims is a hotel. It’s really a retirement home, and, once in, the publisher won’t be released by anyone, particular a hardened head nurse (Hugo Weaving).

5)      In the futuristic city of Neo-Seoul, one individual in a mass production of fast-food serving clones (Doona Bae) begins to think for herself and question her surroundings. When she’s sprung from her dull, repetitive existence by a charismatic stranger (Jim Sturgess), she learns more about herself, and humanity, then she ever dreamed. But the utilitarian government will track her to the ends of the earth to keep her from revealing her revolutionary ideas.

6)      In the distant future, a primitive tribesman (Tom Hanks) struggles with the idea of trusting an exotic stranger (Halle Berry) whose technologies and theory that the world may be ending shake up his simple daily life.

Confused yet? Yes, you read that right: Hanks, Berry, Broadbent, Sturgess, Whishaw, Weaving and Grant all appear in each story in some form, and at least four other actors appear in multiple roles as well. These stories technically have little or nothing to do with each other, though at least one character in each has a particular comet-shaped birthmark, and there are times when certain characters feel sure they’ve met a certain other character before. And I already mentioned the ways the stories overlap, with the exception of the final story, in which the primitive people Hanks’ tribesman belongs to worship the teachings that were given by the Neo Seoul clone, Sonmi-451, and consider her a deity.

Cloud Atlas is far from perfect. Its different stories are well edited together and, probably because they’re so intertwined, are never boring, but there are hiccups aplenty along the way. The stunt-casting of the same principle actors in different genders and nationalities—undoubtedly meant to foster a sense of unity and continuum in the story in addition to saving Tykwer and the Wachowskis money in not requiring a ridiculous-sized cast—is sometimes intriguing, sometimes a terrible idea. For instance, the makeup team does a persuasive job making the 30-ish British D’Arcy a convincing Korean spy. They also do a fair job taking Hugh Grant from bearded aristocrat to elderly swindler to slick corporate CEO to raging, body-painted cannibal. But casting the African-American Keith David as another Asian revolutionary was a terrible idea; an even worse misfire was recreating the Asian Bae as the young lawyer from the first story’s pretty American wife, complete with red hair, freckles, and blue eyes.  Did you ever wonder what Ben Whishaw might look like as an old woman? How about Hugo Weaving? And Halle Berry as a white Jewish housewife? With green-hazel eyes and an odd complexion, she looks more alien than human (she and David’s aforementioned turn as an Asian look like rejects from the Star Wars cantina scene). And other than the looks, the language in the distant future story, written with apostrophes and abbreviations (and dropped conjunctions) aplenty, just as it was in Mitchell’s text, is sometimes cringe-inducingly silly.

And yet… Despite the inherent goofiness of the looks and the casting and some of the spiritualistic/fortune-cookie catchphrases, Cloud Atlas is marvelous in its own distinct way. It certainly gives you plenty to think about, plenty to look at, plenty to talk about afterward. It soars in its best moments (the stowaway slave proving his worth as a sailor, the publisher and some retirement home friends escaping their prison), and it almost never drags. You legitimately care about almost all of the main characters. And some parts leave you cheering (in fact, nearly each of the individual story lines would make an intriguing stand-alone feature, if perhaps fleshed out a bit). The Wachowskis directed the 1850 Pacific storyline and the two futuristic sagas, Tykwer directed the other three, and the divided responsibilities and obvious dedication to the material shows: it’s beautifully shot, often engaging, and edited very nimbly together.

What else can I say? I give the Wachowskis and Tykwer a huge amount of credit for their screenplay and production, making an “unfilmable” novel an impressive, memorable work. The actors, though sometimes forced into bizarre looks or worse accents or over-the-top material (Tom Hanks, I’m looking at you), come together impressively, and the credits sequence showing each main actor in each role is worth watching. Cloud Atlas is long, a little slow, and I’m not sure it really means a whole lot, but as an exercise and as something truly, joyfully different, its admirable and commendable.

Cloud Atlas (2012)

Written for the Screen and Directed by Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, and Tom Tykwer

Based on the novel “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell

Rated R

Length: 172 minutes