Review of Cloud Atlas (2012) by Sean H — 29 Sep 2017

As someone who enjoyed the book, I had long been sceptical that this would work as a film and that had put me off watching Cloud Atlas. After finally watching it, my fears were confirmed.

Cloud Atlas is an ambitious film. It tells 6 different but loosely connected stories starting in Polynesia in the 19th century going through to a post apocalyptic world in the distant future. Some of the stories are stronger than others with Luisa Rey's (Halle Berry) being my favourite but Timothy Cavendish's (Jim Broadbent) being a bit cringe worthy (which was a shame as this was one of my favourites in the book). Each story also utilises the same cast. For the most part, this is a nice touch as it can be fun to see who each cast member is in each story. It also helps create a better feeling that each story is slightly interlinked. The drawback of this approach is that it's resulted in some cast members having make up to make them look a different race. This hasn't been done very well in some cases and is very distracting. It does also lead to a bit of miscasting. Although it's only a brief appearance, Tom Hanks does not work as a cockney thug.

The biggest problem for Cloud Atlas is how the stories are told. It was always going to be tough to get each story to flow smoothly in a film just shy of three hours and it hasn't been achieved here. The way the film cuts between each story is rather jarring often having a scene that lasts no more than a minute or two before chopping to a different set of characters. This makes the film feel disjointed and makes it much easier to get distracted. Had each story been broken down into fewer, larger chunks it would have felt a lot less all other the place and would be much easier to follow but instead it's a bit of a mess.