Review of Cloud Atlas (2012) by Will V — 27 Jan 2015

Cloud Atlas is a film with six different storylines. It is about a diseased American lawyer traveling through the Pacific in 1849. It is about a complicated relationship between an elder, renowned English composer and his bisexual amanuensis.

It is about a sincere journalist and her dangerous quest to expose the conspiracy behind a shady nuclear power project. It is about a book publisher getting imprisoned to a rest home and confronting a nasty nurse, after a gangster author throws a literary critic off the balcony.

It is about a human clone escaping from virtual slavery and being hunted down in a futuristic Korea. It is about a man named Zachry protecting his tribe and relatives from bloodthirsty cannibals, and who has strange visions of a slimy demon called "Old Georgie" in post-apocalyptic Hawaii.

It is a film about love, trust, humanity, freedom, the consequences of one's actions, human's place in this universe - all the big stuff is there. It is a film where Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Ben Whishaw, Susan Sarandon, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant and many other renowned actors play multiple roles and different races.

It is a film where Hugo Weaving plays a woman. It is a film where Keith David plays a black Korean, and where Halle Berry plays a white woman. It is a film where Hanks performs with Scottish/Irish and pidgin accents (which sounds absolutely horrifying).

It is a film... well, you get the point. Having said all this, Cloud Atlas is a colossal project that either enchants you with its unbridled ambition and audacity, or infuriates you with its intricate storytelling, pretentious existential babble, often amusing make-up job and bad accents.

I'm still somewhere in the middle, but its daring ambition, visual grandeur and sheer size and scope are very hard to deny. Its philosophical meditations soar as often as they flounder, and it offers a lot to think about (once you get past the accents, etc.

, of course). It is true one-of-a-kind filmmaking, and definitely deserves to be seen more than once.