"Everything is connected." This is an incredibly fitting slogan, not just for this film, but for the state of the world. We are all so connected to films, to TV, to iphones, to social media, to web videos, to so many different screens playing so many different themes, that we have no idea what we want anymore. This is especially true of the team behind Cloud Atlas. And I'll admit, when I stopped into The Grind cafe to pick up some lunch on my way to the theater, it took me a while to decide on the Melty Cheese Sandwich, on toasted multigrain with some sliced tomato. There are just too many choices today.
Let's start by taking a look at that poster up there. All in one image, we have Tom Hanks with a tribal face tattoo, Jim Sturgess with a victorian top hat, Susan Sarandon looking like Queen Bavmorda melting at the end of Willow, Doona Bae wearing a futuristic, sexy nurse costume, an ocean with a pirate ship, a field with a 19th century mansion, a magic blue cave, and space. If you show me this and say that everything is connected, I say "prove it".
The film follows six stories taking place between 1849 and 2250:
- A sweeping historical fiction dealing with issues of slavery and racism
- An intimate and dark tale of the hidden homosexuality of a musical genius
- A crime suspense thriller about Big Oil's nefarious plans for an energy crisis
- A British comedy about spunky old folks prison-breaking from a nursing home
- A sci-fi action flick about a dystopian world where cloning is in wide-spread use
- A post-apocalyptic struggle among the scattered remnants of humanity on a poisoned and polluted Earth
All the actors play multiple roles, with excellent make-up and costume work in nearly all cases. Of particular note is the chance to see Hugh Grant play a savage, tattooed cannibal, with fingers and jawbones adorning his armor. Not exactly type casting.
I get it, I do. We love multi-tasking. Why go see a sci-fi movie, when you could see a sci-fi action suspense historical romantic comedy drama? There's a lot of fun to be had in this film, particularly in the sudden, jarring cuts between story lines of completely different tones and themes. The problem is that each of these stories has its roots very solidly in one or more films that just do it better. Here are some possible inspirations, listed in the same order as above:
- Amistad
- A Single Man or The Reader
- The French Connection or Conspiracy Theory
- Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day or The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
- The Matrix or Soylent Green
- Waterworld or Mad Max
Each of these films, maybe only because they devote a full two hours to their own specific genre, exceeds the stitched together pieces of their offspring in Cloud Atlas. The film is well-done, with excellent visuals, effective writing, and the high caliber of acting you would expect from all those Stars. But it is a scattered narrative, with the efforts to connect the disparate stories ending up clumsy or overly simple. One character in each story has a comet-shaped birthmark, but there is never any significance given to the shape. There is a romance in each story, but the love at first sight feels rushed and unnecessary in the stories that don't revolve around it. The strongest connection between everything is the same actors appearing in each time period, and you'll spend a large amount of time distracted from the film trying to figure out if that's Hugo Weaving or Halle Berry under all that make-up.
With all that in mind, the movie's impossible ambition is thoroughly entertaining, and the three hours does fly by. We love the idea of getting a little bit of everything rather than just a lot of one thing. When I ordered my Melty Cheese sandwich, the girl behind the counter asked me if I wanted that with cheddar, smoked mozzarella, goat, swiss, pepper-jack, or ALL OF THE ABOVE. This handheld cheese platter, this jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none sandwich is what I brought into the theater with me for Cloud Atlas. What a fitting metaphor... maybe everything is connected.
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