Brilliant, challenging, confusing, awesome, exciting,
thought-provoking. Cloud Atlas is one of
this year’s best. A masterpiece.
The film plays with the idea that all lives are connected
and the action of one can ripple across time like pebbles in water. Love acts as a bridge between lives, and death is only (as one character says) “stepping
through one door” to another existence. Plots
and events in one story are mirrored and expanded on in another, so that like an elaborate quilt the story emerges with each new
piece.
In the film, we are told that all actions, both bad and
good, affect the fabric of the lives we live with others in past, present and
future. I knew beforehand that there
were essentially six different stories woven together. Ranging from 1849 to
1936, 1973, 2012, 2144, and “106 winters after the Fall” (2321), the film uses
the same often brilliant ensemble actors playing both male and female characters.
The stories vary in tone. I was not sure how having six different stories would be explained to the audience. In effect, there was no explanation. The six stories are just told, cutting from one to the other--it assumes the audience
is bright enough to figure it out. And we do.
For me the most touching and powerful is the one which takes
place in Neo Seoul. Bae Donna as Sonmi-451, a stunningly beautiful server/slave,
learns from Jim Sturgess as Hae-Joo Chang the power of love. She learns that
the actions of one individual can change the
history of the world. Sonmi-451’s message is mirrored in the poignant male-male
love story of Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) and Rufus Sixsmith (James D’Arcy)
as two men stay connected in spite of separation.
Tom Hanks’ characters move from a killer intent only on
stealing another’s gold to a non-committed family man who learns to protect all
he cherishes.
With truly outstanding make-up, characters often play
against their type and women play men, men play women, African-Americans and
Asians play Caucasions. It becomes a surprise at the end to see the extensive variety
of roles the lead actors play.
This is one of the few films I can think of that makes me want to study the
script (by Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, and Andy Wachowski), then read David Mitchell’s novel of the same name, and
finally see the film again. I know already that I will see this film more than
once, just as I have seen the Wachowski’s The Matrix several times.
I laughed, I cried, I felt exhilarated, and then I joined the other
moviegoers in applauding both before the credits and after. As I stood up to
leave, I looked at the man at the end of my row who looked at me, smiled and
echoed my thoughts with one word, “Brilliant.”
The musical score by Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil becomes an experience unto itself.
See this before it leaves the big screen.
Cloud Atlas ***** (2012)
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