Movie Review: Cloud Atlas

Trying to live up to the hype after making the big budget epic Matrix sure seems to have been taxing for Lana and Andy Wachowski. Not even their own Matrix sequels managed to live up to audience expectations, but that shouldn’t be too big a surprise; we all know how the law of diminishing returns works. But besides their very first film (Bound) and that first Matrix, it seems as if they’d both decided to take their own blue pills. But on the flipside, it looks as if director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) may have ben feeding them some red pills to get them back on track after the dreadful Speed Racer.

Bringing author David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas to the big screen could not have been an easy task. Six interlocking stories taking place in 1849, 1936, 1973, 2012, 2144, and even further into a post-apocalyptic future, featuring dozens of characters, any adaptation could have easily blundered. Picking a main plot thread would be pointless; the themes of the film are what are really important here. And speaking of threads, each storyline is reflective of the last, even if they don’t seem to be told in any particular order. But as Timothy Cavendish (Jim Broadbent) assures us early on, there is a method to the madness. It’s just too bad that the film is as vapid as it is pretty. Ironically, it’s the Cavendish story that works the best and it’s really pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.

In the meantime, the film is easier to follow than you’d ever believe, but the Wachowskis and Tykwer (who all co-wrote along with directing) have short shifted any kind of emotional structure. Reading the Wikipedia page for the novel makes for a more interesting read and I think had the original structure been followed they could have succeeded in this department for sure. As it stands, we’re left watching what mostly plays out as a string of interconnected skits with the cast (Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, Keith David, James D’Arcy, Xun Zhou, David Gyasi, Susan Sarandon, Hugh Grant, Brody Nicholas Lee, and Broadbent) popping up as different variations of themselves spanning across all the time periods mentioned before.

Article Author: Cinenerd

A Utah based writer, born and raised in Salt Lake City, UT for better and worse. Cinenerd has had an obsession with film his entire life, finally able to write about them since 2009, and the only thing he loves more are his wife and their two wiener dogs (Beatrix Kiddo and Pixar Animation). …

Visit Cinenerd's author page — Cinenerd's Blog