Cloud Atlas (2012)

"Cloud Atlas" has to be one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. Now, whether is amazing in a good way or amazing in an unholy train-wreck way I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps it's a helping of both. It's probably entirely dependent on whom you're talking to, because it's very clear that this is a film that possesses little room for middle ground. You're either going to be blown away by the hulking scale of it all, or there is going to be a remote control imbedded in the drywall after being hurled across the room in frustration.

Describing the story of "Cloud Atlas" is a rather ambitious exercise in futility, because the structure is very unconventional. Stretching across hundreds of years, the film follows several different stories, all containing different characters and settings, but keeping familiar themes throughout. The cast is also recycled in each story, as each actor plays about half a dozen roles, often under heavy makeup and routinely changing both ethnicity and gender. This coincidentally leads to the majority of the numerous WTF moments of "Cloud Atlas," which kind of make the whole thing worth it by themselves.

Not to mention how jaw-droppingly beautiful this movie is.

The reason for the actors playing multiple roles is because what the film is following is not specifically the characters of any one time, but their souls as they are reincarnated over and over again. Each soul gets their own timeline to shine, so to speak, but because of the pervasive presence of all the other souls in each story and the fact that the narrative jumps back and forth so rapidly, it doesn't ever feel like there's a singular main character. In a strange way it's almost as if the title character were time itself. And that's seriously the best I can do in describing the story. Anything deeper would involve a couple hundred pages and a whole lot of talking about themes and symbolism. And that's kind of boring.

 

Explosions however, are not.

What is interesting is that while each individual story would probably be considered cliched by itself, the way that it is presented in combination with all the other stories makes it unique enough to be interesting. And since we only spend about a minute at a time with each story until we switch again, there's not really enough time to get bored with the particular cliches that inhabit it.

Adding to the entertainment factor is the game of Where's Waldo that you constantly play while watching "Cloud Atlas," where you do your best to spot the actors under the pounds of makeup they wear. Not only is it fun to recognize Tom Hanks looking like Brad Dourif in "Deadwood" or Hugh Grant underneath the face paint of an Uruk-Hai looking cannibal, which is surreal in of itself, but you also get truly insane stuff like Hugo Weaving showing up looking like Ms. Doubtfire crossed with Nurse Ratchet. And Susan Sarandon looking like Sigmund Freud. And Halle Berry looking like Ming the Merciless. You can't help but laugh and marvel at the horrifyingly entertaining madness of it all.

When Hugh Grant showed up looking like Asian Penn Jillette, part of my life felt complete.

You know, it's entirely possible that this whole thing is simply a pretentious disaster which is so engorged on its own scope that it gives off the illusion of being important and cerebral when it's really just a slideshow of random scenes thrown in a blender and put together without context, and any kind of deeper meaning is completely dependent on either arbitrary visual callbacks, or what the viewer puts in themselves. That is certainly a possibility.

But you know what? It worked on me. I was thoroughly captivated throughout the entire thing, and with a towering run-time of nearly 3 hours, that's saying a lot. It's probably the most pretentious film I've ever really liked, but I thought it was well-made enough to warrant that bit of nose-in-the-air ridiculousness. At least it wasn't boring. There's a lot of things that "Cloud Atlas" can be accused of being, like confusing, overly long and full of itself, but boring is not one of them.

This is a rather accurate trailer for what the movie is like. If this looks interesting, you might dig it.

THE BOTTOM LINE - I must admit to being totally shocked by how much I liked "Cloud Atlas," because I was not expecting to at all. I'm guessing about half of most people won't. It's really long, it's really weird, it goes all over the place, and it's very easy to get lost inside the labyrinthine jumble of stories within. But damn it, it's well made and it's entertaining as crap. This is a movie everyone should see at least once. If you're going to hate it, you'll know really quick. Otherwise hang on and prepare yourself for some craziness. This would have landed in the lower half of my Top 10 of 2012 had I seen it last year.