Cloud Atlas

I told myself I'd be more succinct, but then I decided to try and talk about Cloud Atlas. There's just so much to say! Main thing being, this is a film that I actually genuinely admired, I appreciated, I would go as far as saying I really intensely liked it, wouldn't go as far as loved it but perhaps some day I'll recall in a daze these strong feelings and misinterpret them as love... I can't help rambling. Cloud Atlas could have been six individual films all each at about an hour each, instead we have close to three hours of six intersecting wildly different tales merged together. Somehow the vastly different scenarios and events all seem to have a unifying mythology and purpose, and somehow, I have no idea why, they manage to convey a singular message. I don't think I've seen a more ambitious film on screen in forever, what it lacks in coherency at some points it more than makes up for in heart and sheer craziness.

So the first hour or so can be a complete headache, the film jumps from scene to scene, timeline to timeline without so much as a passing explanation, in fact if I remember correctly the film sets up the near end of most of the main characters of each time-line at the end of their tales; just to confuse you further when you drop back in on them later. You are breathlessly dragged kicking and screaming through each story, sections of which are told cutting between two stories at once, just to confuse you further, then things seem to shift down a couple of gears as the second act jolts into play. Each individual story starts off at one place and takes you on a journey to an end you definitely weren't expecting from the start. Some of the tales are bleak, others are hilarious, others a bit a more sombre.

Probably worth mentioning each of the stories. There is a 17th Century chap travelling on a boat being poisoned by his doctor who befriends a stowaway slave. Ben Whishaw plays a 1930s composer seeking to write a masterpiece. Halle Berry, is a female reporter in the 1970s searching for a story and finds herself in danger. 2012 Jim Broadbent finds himself trapped in an old folks home, a light reprieve from the other stories. 2144, a Korean girl in New Seoul genetically engineered as a waitress escapes with the help of a mysterious ninja guy. After the Fall Tom Hanks is living in a tribe in the woods hiding from some cannibals and Halle Berry with her advanced technology is looking for something...

Cloud Atlas is a film that had something for everyone, the cinema would erupt with laughter at all the sequences involving Jim Broadbent trying to escape his incarceration, I know I was mesmerised by Ben Whishaw's letters to his lover in the 1930s, and blown away by the visual effects of New Seoul in 2144, plus the whole sequence was pretty damn good. Of course others may disagree, I doubt anyone will particularly adore the boat sequence... But hey if Halle Berry running around in turtlenecks does it for you, there's plenty of that!

But here's where it gets interesting, each actor has their own specific story but they also reappear in each of the timelines as reincarnated selves, playing completely different characters. Hence why the first hour becomes so damn confusing, not only are you jumping through time and environs, you're also witnessing people who are vaguely recognisable under the make-up and attire being totally different characters. I nearly choked when I saw Tom Hanks playing an angry gangster/author getting incredibly angry at a publisher party, well... That's where the fun starts.

The film toys with the idea of reincarnation as each of the core characters come with a birthmark shaped like a comet, it's never really fully expressed as a unifying thread apart from when Halle Berry mentions it briefly, but the camera lingers on each of their birthmarks so we know the chosen few. Then the film has fun with the rest of the cast as in each of the six story-lines the actors rotate around the roles. Several are blink and you will literally miss it moments in each time lines, others are more significant, but all are masked with tons of make-up and prosthetics just to make things interesting. Let me get one thing straight, seeing Hugh Grant, yeah Hugh Grant, actually playing roles way beyond Hugh Grant's foppish/arsehole persona, well I nearly died laughing. Then there was the amazing Hugo Weaving in drag as a nurse, that took a few minutes of disbelief. Hugo Weaving also appears as a mirage or fantasy of Tom Hanks in the distant future, the boogie man whispering over his shoulder, that was really odd*... It's not just gender-bending they partake in either, the film has a plethora of different races in within it's cast and there are instances where the cast have prosthetics to make them appear Asian (it looks shocking...) and then the Korean actress and Halle Berry are both made up to appear Caucasian which looks... Well, it looks pretty bad too... But this is all part of the ambition, you have a wide spanning selection of tales, and the whole having the same actors playing the wide variety of roles was a masterstroke in some senses but also in practise a bit crazy. But you literally can't fault the ambition of these people. It's connecting their souls through the ages and that's magical, and although the make-up is hit and miss, it's also an intriguing idea.

I doubt there will ever be a film like Cloud Atlas made again, largely because it was hugely expensive and no one saw it, but also because it was literally too much, too expansive, too ambitious. I can't fault a filmmaker for being too ambitious, and the film doesn't talk down to it's audience which is unique for a big expensive blockbuster. Sure it gets a bit preachy near the end, but I was touched by the overarching message of Cloud Atlas and the way it managed to weave the intersecting stories and give us a feeling that these souls were all connected without taking a pen and spelling it out to us on screen is definitely special. It's challenging and exhausting but to be honest I was entertained.

*It reminded me of the Hitcher, you know except he didn't have the polo thing... or the thumb... I haven't watched Mighty Boosh in a while but that was definitely what I was thinking!