Cloud Atlas (review)

"Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past, and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future."

Cloud Atlas is the name of the latest film by the Wachowski Brothers siblings and Tom Tykwer, adapting the novel of the same name. Running time: 172 minutes, which is very near three hours. It stars Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, and a very large handful of others, playing—literally—a variety of roles. It is a movie about adventure, discovery, and taking a good hard look at yourself and the state of humanity, much like the other movies the Wachowski siblings are known for—The Matrix trilogy, V for Vendetta. (Of course, those same Wachowskis gave us Speed Racer, so some may take this with a grain of salt.)

It consists of six different stories, being told at various eras in time. They are connected both causally and spiritually, if one buys into those radical new age holistic spiritualities. What's interesting about this movie that, by nature, you cannot write an effective synopsis without writing six smaller synopses, or some abstract, metastory sludge that is not indicative of anything. An interesting consequence of this is that it is entirely impossible to spoil for someone without their active consent and participation. There is nothing you can say that will ruin the movie for them that doesn't take a half hour and potentially a couple of diagrams to convey.

This all in mind, we have two options to continue. I can go on with describing Cloud Atlas to some depth and breadth, so that you can understand it better before you choose to walk in—and I will, soon enough—or you can take it on faith that this movie is the most excellent thing to happen to movies in a long time, and put off finishing reading this writeup to go watch all three glorious hours of it and take everything in. I can assure you it is totally worth it, to enter completely blind and leave thoroughly surprised, as I'd somehow managed to do.

If—and hopefully when—you do choose to watch this movie in a theatre, do not leave to use the restroom in the middle of the film: be sure to empty out before watching, and bring a drink and quiet snack.

An upperclassman in the mid-1800s suffering from a curious malady keeps a diary of his sea voyage home to the mainland United States.

A 1973 journalist whose life is threatened by a hitman has to solve the mystery surrounding a nuclear power plant and an elusive document.

An old, world-weary man sits by a nighttime campfire and recounts the story of the events that transformed his village and his future.

A young man writes letters to his sweetheart about becoming the amanuensis to an old composer, and later starting his own musical career.

A "fabricant"–turned–revolutionary details to her captors the circumstances under which she escaped the Neo Seoul authorities and learned the truth.

A neurotic publisher gets in a bit of a rub with the wrong people, and subsequently finds himself hiding out in an oppressive old-folks home.

Cloud Atlas is an epic, in the truest sense of the word. When I stated above that it is six stories in one three-hour movie, I lied. It is one story, told from the perspective of six different time periods, all different, yet all fundamentally the same. It spans three hours and a hundred stunning visual effects not out of style, or some needed right to brag, but out of the sheer necessity of proper storytelling. It is full of emotion and adventure, and will surprise you more than once. The scope is just immense.

Cloud Atlas watches almost like a time travel movie, even though no time travel is involved. As you skip from time to time, things in the future are explained by the past, and things in the past remanifest themselves in the future, in extraordinary ways. Soon, as one scene jumps into another, you are first left wondering as to how they might connect, and then utterly amazed when they begin to do so. It becomes a game of "what's going to happen next", with momentarily saddening moments of "damn, I wanted to see more of this part!" right before you are immersed in the next cross-temporal segment.

Interestingly enough, the movie was filmed in almost two halves, concurrently, by separate film crews: the Wachowskis directing the 1931, 1973, and 2012 scenes, and Tykwer doing the remaining three. The interesting thing is that the movie jumps between these two "different styles" so seamlessly that you don't even notice. In and of themselves, the six storylines are different types of story: Luisa Rey's mystery-thriller investigation is vastly different from the hard-and-fast sci-fi scenes of 2144 or the comedy of Cavendish's later life.

A cloud atlas, according to Wikipedia, is "a pictorial key to the nomenclature of clouds." There must be something mystical about clouds, being so malleable and so varied, yet so recurrent that we might have cloud atlases. In reflecting this, Cloud Atlas shines: it is a comprehensive atlas of people and their struggles, and how they can recur and influence each other throughout time. We can see what storms arise and what patterns emerge, and how they lead from one to another in the most curious of ways.

One overarching theme that you can pick out seems to be the overcoming of boundaries and of taboo. Every one of the six stories has some sort of triumph, some form of stepping outside of oneself and beyond. People are bound by boundaries, but by being cognizant of those boundaries, they can be overcome.

This movie is beautiful. It is shocking. It is frightening. It is eye-opening. There will be blood. There will be tears. Some may be yours. A few of them are definitely mine. There will be a sense of confusion; of despair; of temporary solace; of surprise and wondrous epiphany. A killer becomes a hero. A man becomes free. A famous critic becomes a stain on the pavement. A letter becomes a link to the past. A stuffed shirt becomes a pop culture icon. At no point will you be bored by Cloud Atlas.

I have not yet seen Cloud Atlas a second time. I don't expect it'll be any less satisfying than the first.

N.B.: As much as I might sound like I'm avoiding a great number of content-related spoilers with this "in-depth review" above—and indeed, I'm hiding some very important nuggets of movie content in my descriptions, in more ways than one—this is still really pushing the envelope in terms of changing how you might see the movie. I know that the whole try-before-you-buy issue is a little weird with movies, so a good trailer or a comprehensive review are very nice in that regard, but I cannot stress enough the fact that this movie is absolutely golden, and the less you know coming in on your first time, the better.

"An exploration of how the actions of individual lives impact one another in the past, present and future, as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero, and an act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution." –The official synopsis for Cloud Atlas

Addendum, for better or worse: I have now seen Cloud Atlas a second time. Besides the prescience (ho ho, that was a pun) necessary to tell my parents when to shield my younger sibling's eyes, I also noticed many things that simply escaped me the first time. Be aware, for I will assume that you, the reader, have also seen it at least once, by now.

The other half of Ewing's journal was being used to prop up a table in Vyvyan's room, and it can be seen in the second shot of the bullet casing from when Frobisher shoots Vyvyan. It also happens to mark approximately the halfway point of Ewing's story, as I gather it had in the book. Also, curiously, Broadbent, Vyvyan's actor, plays the captain of the ship in the 1849 era, while Whishaw plays both Frobisher and a cabin boy that the captain boxes behind the ears just before Ewing reveals Autua, the stowaway.

The name of Sonmi~451 absolutely permeates the culture of the post-Fall Earth, even more than I thought on the first viewing. When Zachry gets the reading from Abbess, the shaman-woman character played by Susan Sarandon, she tells him to nail the thought to his memory, in reference to the Fabricant execution method that Sonmi finally succumbs to at the end of the movie. Furthermore, as Sonmi is finishing recounting her tale to the Archivist, she says that heaven is like a door that opens, and on the other side, she will see Hae-Joo Chang again; this is interleaved with the scene of Jim Sturgess as Adam Ewing reuniting with his wife, played by Doona Bae, in 1849, which absolutely blew my mind. (For those who failed to see it, Bae and Sturgess also play Sonmi and Hae-Joo, respectively.)

And speaking of not-so-superficial casting choices, you probably noticed Hugo Weaving as Nurse Noakes in 2012, but did you catch Ben Whishaw as Tim Cavendish's sister-in-law and once-lover, Georgette? Also, neither Weaving nor Hugh Grant played any protagonist roles—unless you sympathized with 2144's Seer Rhee, who's clearly just an unfortunate restaurant owner, overdosing soap addict, and general hedonist.

The most curious thing about the film would have to be the feeling of satiation. I've only seen it twice, but both times I left feeling full, both as a moviegoer and as a philosophizing human being. It could be that it's just three hours long, but I wouldn't want to see it a third time right this minute, because I think I'd need a little while to sit and digest this buffet of eye-candy and moral food for thought.

RAW INFORMATION PORTION

• Tom Hanks
• Halle Berry
• Jim Broadbent
• Hugo Weaving
• Jim Sturgess
• Doona Bae
• Ben Whishaw
• James D'Arcy
• Zhou Xun
• Keith David
• David Gyasi
• Susan Sarandon
• Hugh Grant