Monthly Archives: December 2013

Cloud Atlas Promotional Poster

I’ve been meaning to watch Cloud Atlas since it hit the theaters last year. I like Tom Hanks and I also really like Halle Berry. As with many movies I’d like to see I missed it on the big screen and had to catch it on DVD. Now, I’m a science fiction fan. The first ever science fiction story I read was Nightfall by Isaac Asimov. The Foundation Trilogy is still one of my favorite series of books. What I’m trying to say, as if my previous articles on the matter aren’t enough, is that I have science fiction cred.

That being established; Cloud Atlas is a movie that gets caught up in itself and fails to find a way out. The science fiction is not strong enough to carry the ugly brutality and soullessness of the movie. It took me a few minutes to figure out what it was all about, due to the, at times, needless iterations within the movie, but at its core Cloud Atlas is a failed combination of a twist on The Matrix and Blade Runner. It is a graphically violent movie with graphic sex although only implied rape. It is an ugly movie with little to redeem itself.

Major Spoilers Ahead: You’ve Been Warned.

Cloud Atlas is a movie that attempts to tackle big ideas. The movie explores what it means to be human from the depths of depravity to the…well that’s the thing. It never makes it to the heights of what humankind can achieve on a purely human level. The movie shows, actually kind of wallows in, the brutality that humans commit against one another in every age and at every technological level but it never really shows the good we can achieve. It hints at the possibility, but there is always a selfish reason behind what happens.

The horror of atrocities committed against slaves, women, children, clones and anyone perceived as weak are well and graphically realized as we progress through iterations of people born and interacting time and again. While horror is proudly displayed, there is no real soul in the movie. There is an attempt at viewing all human beings as fully human, even clones. The parallel between clones and slaves is heavy handed but it is drowned in a movie that has a nonlinear timeline and by stories that jump back and forth between people who may or may not ever truly interact in any meaningful way.

The story, I assume they meant for it to become one story, is told through a choppy set of tales about different people who are supposed to be, or at least interact with, two or three main people who exist in some fashion at different times throughout the history of this world. The viewer ends up getting a snippet of one story followed by a snippet of another with different characters, followed by yet another snippet with still more characters. This can be an effective way to tell a story that involves different characters whose lives are woven together to a final conclusion. Cloud Atlas forgot to weave them all together. Just because someone meets the main character in a former life in some minor role does not mean we, the viewer, need to spend 20 disjointed minutes following them just to see that one moment where he hands them their mail. Although I will say that I did appreciate the “Soylent Green is people!” line and it was not lost on me how it pertained to other parts of the movie.

The ending is less than satisfying. There is no catharsis, no moment when everything really comes together to be what the movie hints at. The fabric that is supposed to be woven from the individual threads is never actually knitted together. The threads seem to just continue on their way, independent of each other except that these particular individuals keep being reborn. Sadly that is not enough to realize a fully crafted plot. Cloud Atlas provides things to think about but is far less than satisfying as a story.

The movie suffers from too many ideas and not enough cohesiveness. Nothing is actually tied together in the end. Were the actions in the past able to affect the future? How is that possible since we saw the future concurrently with the pasts and nothing changed? There were also moments in the movie that completely threw the viewer out of the world they were trying to create. I can see why this did poorly at the box office. If I were to make a suggestion, it would be to focus on the two main plots and cut out at least two of the sub-plots. Make the connections between the past, present and future stronger.

While I appreciate a movie that attempts to tackle big ideas and shine a light on the ills of society, Cloud Atlas failed to tell a good story. It told a lot of stories, not one of them was good and the overall violence and ugliness of the movie leaves the viewer dissatisfied. It wasn’t a waste of brain space like Saturday Night Fever and there were a few moments of shining brilliance but it was not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination. K.