Cloud Atlas

Starring: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Doona Bae, Jim Sturgess, Hugo Weaving, Ben Whishaw, Keith David, Susan Sarandon, David Gyasi and Hugh Grant

Directed by: Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer & Andy Wachowski

Rating: ★★

Based on the novel of the same name by English author David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas is a movie that has already divided audiences and critics alike. Some say it’s wonderful, others say it’s terrible. I thought it was mediocre. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad: it is a watchable although confused movie that is both ingenious and injudicious. It is also another great example of movie makers going mad with power.

I don't blame them for being confused- everyone in the audience was...

Cloud Atlasis a three hour action/comedy/thriller that simultaneously interweaves six separate but apparently ‘interconnected’ stories throughout time. Three stories are set in the past, one in the present, and two in the future:  each actor is the central character of each one, whilst playing supporting or peripheral characters in the other adjacent storylines.

The dystopian future in Neo Seoul looks amazing.

In 1849, whilst sailing across the Pacific Ocean, Adam Ewing (Sturgess), a young American lawyer befriends a tribal slave stowaway called Autua (Gyasi) on board his ship. In 1936 Robert Frobisher (Whishaw), an English musician, works alongside a famous composer in order to work on his own musical masterpiece. In 1973, Luisa Rey (Berry), an American journalist, becomes embroiled in a conspiracy involving a power plant. Present day, 2012, Timothy Cavendish (Broadbent), an English publisher, finds himself held against his will in a frightening nursing home. Flash forward a hundred years into the future to 2144 in Neo Seoul, where Sonmi-451 (Bae), a genetically engineered clone, starts a rebellion against the totalitarian government now ruling Korea. Hundreds of years after this, human civilisation has been destroyed, and a tribesman called Zachry (Hanks) must fight against a cannibalistic tribe whilst helping a woman from another world.

The plot may be confused, but at least the acting is solid...

Now if you can wrap your head around how these stories are interlinked without having to look it up on Wikipedia, then you’re a better man than me. Throughout the duration of the film there are subtle ‘clues’ as to how and why the stories relate to one another, but it is never really fully realised or stated, and instead of having a huge impacting crescendo of reveals at the end, we get a damp squid of a finale that is muted, rushed and sappy.

Even though it’s a three hour long sprawling epic that fails to be in any way meaningful, it’s still fairly enjoyable. I wasn’t bored throughout the duration, and that is because some of the stories are actually very interesting and well acted. 

Halle Berry gets the best main part and plot as Luisa Rey, in a story that could probably be good enough by itself. As the likeable heroine, she gives a scene stealing performance as she always does, and is also good support in Hank’s story. 

Halle Berry is excellent as Luis Rey.

It’s hard not to like Tom Hanks, but his segment set in the future is difficult to follow, mainly because they speak in some weird creole that may work in a book, but doesn’t work when being mumbled quietly in a movie that is already hard enough to understand.

Hanks speaks gobbledegook for the entire movie.

The Neo Seoul plot is also thoroughly interesting. It looks amazing because it consists of sequences dependent on dazzling digital effects to successfully create a disturbing and nightmarish view of the future. Bae is really good as Sonmi-451, and the ‘twist’ to her story, though not at all original, manages to work in the context of the film.

The reveal may not be original, but Bae gives a solid and memorable performance as a clone

Even though it was funny and I rather enjoyed it, the story about Timothy Cavendish is entirely superfluous and unnecessary. It may add comedy moments but it doesn't need to be in Cloud Atlas at all. Robert Frobisher's story is compelling and important, but isn't developed enough to be as impacting as it should have been.

Generally, the casting and acting is very good, and the directing and visual style is fantastic. It’s such a shame that Cloud Atlas is an overlong, over indulgent and confusing movie that doesn’t really make a clear statement as to what the hell it is trying to say to the audience. It’s not surprising to discover that funding for the movie was an arduous experience for the directors, but it is a surprise that in the end it was financed entirely by German production companies, the German government, and (less surprisingly) the Wachowskis’ own money. They took a big risk in making Cloud Atlas, and although I commend them for being bold and trying something new, the film is still a mess. It’s an enjoyable mess, but it’s a mess none the less.

There are an awful lot of problems with Cloud Atlas, the most notable being the fact that most of the film fails to make logical sense because the stories are not sutured together properly and are, for the most part, left unexplained as to how they all overlap and interrelate. The ending isn’t succinct or intelligent enough to feel satisfying, and this makes the entire film an essentially confused jumble of disparate stories that are all held together by one incredibly tenuous link: that the actors are same.

Whishaw once again gets to be bland and moody in his story...

In actual fact, the point of the movie is meant to be about how one act of kindness triggers positive experiences in the lives of the protagonists or something, but this is really not clear whilst watching it. It’s meant to be that we are the world, we are the children or something cheesy like that, but because the stories fail to come together in any kind of meaningful way, it is unsuccessful at being moving and poignant, which it tries it’s hardest to be.

Apparently, after its premiere at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival , Cloud Atlas received a 10 minute standing ovation.  The film has polarised critics, and it’s obvious why. The film may be technically sound, and in parts enjoyable, but you shouldn’t have to watch a film multiple times to be able to understand what it is trying to say to you. Sure, you can watch a film repeatedly and get more from it on repeat viewings, but a movie is only a success if the audience understands the reason why they spent three hours of their life watching it the first time round.

Halle Berry's plot is thrilling and interesting...

Whilst we're on the subject of the negative aspects of Cloud Atlas, I think that it's important that I mention the terrible make-up effects.  The ‘Korean-ening’ of the central actors, which is on a par as being as awful to look at and as horribly offensive as Sean Connery ‘Japanesey-ing’ himself in You Only Live Twice, is odd, distasteful and pointless. I get that the lead actors are all meant to appear in each story, but seeing Bae as a ginger-nutted round eye and Berry as a Korean man is bizarre and unintentionally comical.

Jim Broadbent proves almost all of the outrageous comedy in his funny but necessary story

The main problem that I have with Cloud Atlas is its weak and rushed finale. We wait a long time to get there, and we deserve an impacting explanation, but are not afforded one. I’m sure some people will say that ‘the ending is what you make of it’ or something like that, but that’s a cop-out. Compare this style of interconnected parallel storytelling to a much more successful movie that uses the same plotting devises e.g. Magnolia, in which every story comes together for a meaningful and pertinent reason to give the film emotional clout that stays with the viewer long after they’ve seen it. Cloud Atlas doesn't even come near to replicating the successful well joined intricacies of Magnolia.

If you have to look at the plot synopsis on Wikipedia to understand the meaning of a jumbled, rumbling mess like Cloud Atlas, then it has failed. After spending three hours investing time and energy into something as sprawling and epic as this, you want a decent payoff.

Autua and Adam learn that they have more in common then they might have initially thought...

Cloud Atlasmay be a well-acted, good looking and sometimes enjoyable film with some interesting ideas and plots, but on the whole it is a complete mess, and that all comes down to bad plotting and a hollow finale.

Ironically, for a movie based solely around humanity’s reason to exist, it doesn’t have a meaningful raison d’etre itself. Cloud Atlas is a pointless exercise in technical movie making that left me wondering why they even bothered to make a film that is essentially devoid of any kind of emotional significance in the first place.