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Cloud Atlas
| Released |
22 February 2013 |
Director(s)
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Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski |
Starring
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Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Susan Sarandon, Hugh Grant, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, James D'Arcy, Xun Zhou, Keith David, David Gyasi |
Writer(s)
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Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski |
Producer(s)
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Grant Hill, Stefan Arndt, Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski |
Origin
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Germany, United States, Hong Kong, Singapore |
| Running Time |
172 minutes |
| Genre |
Drama, mystery, sci-fi |
| Rating |
15A |
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Head in the Clouds.
Cloud Atlas is a difficult one to describe. It is a three hour epic which encompasses action, romance, mystery, drama, and dystopian and post-apocalyptic science fiction. It follows the lives of six separate groups of characters (with the cast playing multiple roles) from the nineteenth century to the distant future. Its themes of recurrence and connection are represented in the repetition of themes, ideas and choices throughout the narrative. It is a standard enough complaint to describe a novel as unfilmable, but the source material by David Mitchell seems more than justified as such. Even a brief summary of his plot (or absence thereof) is a difficult task.
This makes the adaptation by the three director team of Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer all the more impressive. Certainly there are echoes of the trio’s previous films, from the Wachowski’s Matrix trilogy to Tykwer’s Perfume (another book once considered unfilmable). But Cloud Atlas is in many ways a new breed of film entirely. It mashes up a succession of genres and storylines, jumping quickly from story thread to story thread in a way that shouldn’t work, but somehow does.
Mostly this is down to the sheer visual splendour which the film provides. From its sumptuous period detail, to a superbly realised future world, the setting of Cloud Atlas is an absolute feast for the eyes. The film flashes quickly from timeline to timeline, and those who haven’t read the book will be left scratching their heads at certain points. It is packed full of hidden meaning, metaphor, symbolism, literary references, allusions and illusions.
But the stylistic flourishes in the cinematography keep the Cloud Atlas ticking along nicely. Even if its meaning isn’t clear after a single viewing, this hardly matters. Cloud Atlas is a film sure to reward repeat viewings. It practically begs to be watched again and again.
Cloud Atlas’s defiance of convention is nowhere more evident than in its casting. Audiences may have a certain expectation of actors like Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant, Halle Berry and Susan Sarandon, who good or bad, tend to stick fairly close to a single character model. This expectation immediately is broken down in the opening scene, which features Hanks almost unrecognisable beneath weather-beaten face and white beard, speaking in strange tones. Throughout interweaving subplots actors you thought you would know anywhere pop up in strange places, or pass by unrecognised entirely. Particular highlights include Hanks as an Irish gangster, Hugo Weaving as a sadistic nurse, or Grant (who has built an entire career out of one specific role) as a machete-wielding leader of a tribe of cannibals.
With so much going on, it would be very easy for Cloud Atlas to collapse under the weight of its own ambitious intentions. Instead, against all odds, the spiralling narrative remains tied together well, and never really goes off on too much of a tangent, despite burgeoning plotlines and bizarre character development.
Cloud Atlas may be too much of a challenge to its audience to appeal to everyone, but it is a film that everybody needs to see in order for people to make up their minds for themselves.
- Bernard O'Rourke |
