By snoadmin
“Cloud Atlas,” the new collaborative film by the Wachowski Siblings and Tom Tykwer is one of the most bizarre and complex cinematic efforts of this generation. For this reason many people will be put off by it, but those who give it a chance will be rewarded with an exciting and mind-bending experience that is like nothing that has ever come before it.
The film contains six radically different storylines that span from 1850 to a distant post-apocalyptic future. Rather than being told in their entirety, the stories are broken up and layered on top of each other. Each story is tangentially related to the one before it through one character reading the journals or letters of another.
These stories unravel in chronological order and then go back and forth through the timelines, showing the relations and similarities of the characters and stories as the decisions of one person affect the lives of those who follow in their footsteps. The connective tissue between the stories is blatant at some points and entirely ambiguous at others.
Tom Hanks and Halle Berry are the primary players in the film, playing a vast array of characters from all walks of life. Hanks is fantastic as a diabolically evil doctor on an 1850 sailing ship, a nuclear scientist and a tribal goat herder in a post-apocalyptic world. Berry plays a feisty investigative reporter in the 1970s, the wife of a famous musician and a futuristic visitor who hopes to save mankind.
The first hour of the film is somewhat hard to follow. All of the storylines and characters are introduced all at once, and the relationship between the stories is unclear. However, as the viewer becomes more accustomed to the way the stories are being told, the structure of the film becomes more comfortable. By the third act, the six storylines can almost be seen as one single story about how humans continue to make the same mistakes from generation to generation.
The film is an interesting experiment on how we consume stories in different genres and styles. Using precise editing and pacing, the filmmakers are able to cut seamlessly between a breakout at an old peoples’ home and a gunfight in futuristic Asia without losing any momentum at all. It goes to prove that no matter how different some stories may seem to be, they are always comparable in some way.
Similarly, all human beings, male or female, old or young go through the same choices, conflicts and triumphs as everyone else. One simple act of kindness or evil can send ripples through the timeline that can be seen decades into the future.
“Cloud Atlas” is not a perfect film, but its massive ambition, colorful characters and impressive filmmaking make for an unforgettable experience at the movies. It takes the audience on a journey that will follow them long after the credits roll, and will work its way into their dreams at night like a long lost memory of a past life.
