Review of Cloud Atlas (2012) by Maineutral R — 02 Jul 2014

The thing with ambitious long films is that they have difficulties in the story-telling. It's not the first time in Cloud Atlas; we also have Tree of Life, The Fountain, even The End of Evangelion, all with out-of-the-senses narrative and with an unlike pacing. But watching such movies also delivers quite a sense of grandeur, seeing how the film actually accomplishes something, one thing at least, but a big one. Cloud Atlas is a good movie that has great elements in every time period it takes. All with rich visuals, great performances and almost every kind of sensation ever done in motion picture history. Doesn't sound that ambitious now huh? (Sarcasm, you idiot).

I liked how all these stories feel so different and yet they form one sole story that shares a similar theme. Yeah, it's all about everything being connected somehow, how a little fraction of something can change something else not only in the future, but also in the past, and with that, out present too. Ambitious, huh? The challenging part of Cloud Atlas is both his length and tight narrative. We actually see all the 6 timelines together, and that requires some patience, because it always gets to that part where you shout: "Oh yeah, that story too about the...yeah". The same thing happened to the second Hobbit film, with many stories trying to be told in real time. But at least that was one timeline to follow, their middle-age present, but Cloud Atlas does a much more challenging 6 timelines to develop in real time, that's insane! It does well, but has its problems. I would say the Hobbit 2 did much better in telling many stories at the same time.

If there's something that clearly overcomes all these tight narrative issues, is how well it executes each of the timelines. The 1849 timeline has a great slave-morality story; the 1936 story has a great Amadeus-ish, homosexual-romance story; the 1973 has a great reporter story; the 2012 timeline has a funny old-age story (with Hugo Weaving playing a NURSE CARE in an Asylum for the old people); The 2144 is an entertaining sci-fi futuristic story and the Big Isle timeline is a great...story, of whatever kind of story it is. It has great elements in each segment and, through difficult, Cloud Atlas is also an ambitious and thought-provoking epic film with a little bit of everything for everyone. Another great work from the Wachowskis.