Review of Cloud Atlas (2012) by Aleatoric — 30 Oct 2012

This film is vast in scope. The downside is that, as a result of stretching so vast, some of the plots become rather thin. However, the synergy of these stories woven together still left me feeling like I had seen something epic and powerful.

This movie has some staggering flaws that prevent it from being the masterpiece of cinema it could have been. Character development is one of the things that were spread thin, and in a movie like this, it needs to be paramount.

The moral themes of the movie have all been beaten to a dead horse by other films. They're important themes critical to our worldview, but in Cloud Atlas it just comes across as preachy and obvious, which almost belittles the importance of these themes.

On the plus side, the visuals and directing are amazing. Despite the setting shifting so drastically, they made all the stories somehow be consistent and interwoven well. That was critical in the main theme of the movie that "everything is connected.

" That theme has been done in other movie and television shows before, but Cloud Atlas has at least done that one exceptionally well, although on first view it can be difficult to piece it all together.

I consider myself a fairly intelligent viewer: I was able to watch things like Inception and Looper without an issue following the plot. But Cloud Atlas left me scrambling to put the puzzle pieces together.

I'm still not sure if this is due to bad writing or an incredibly good job at being cryptic and subtle. For a movie that tries to connect everything, it will be mindbogglingly difficult for most viewers to do so.

Most will give up and just see the stories as an incoherent, garbled mess. Fortunately, the more I think about the film, the more I realize about its connections. I might even watch it again, despite its 3 hour length.

The person I watched the movie with absolutely hated the film and would never consider watching again. But I'm a patient person who likes these kinds of movies, even if they are a bit over the top and contrived at times.

If you have no problem with the willful suspension of disbelief and love longwinded but heartfelt fantasy movies, definitely see Cloud Atlas. If you have an "ADHD" approach to media, you might want to steer away.

This movie is not for the impatient. It's for the inquisitive--those who love to keep wondering long after the video stops rolling. Basically, if you liked the ending of LOST, you might like Cloud Atlas.

Vice versa... perhaps not.