Cloud Atlas (2012)
DIRECTOR: Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer
CAST: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, Doona Bae, James D’Arcy, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon, Keith David, David Gyasi
REVIEW:
The film adaptation of David Mitchell’s 2004 novel, a German production co-directed by the Wachowski siblings behind The Matrix and German director Tom Tykwer, is nothing if not ambitious. A sprawling epic spinning an interwoven tapestry of six loosely-connected short stories set in different time periods, populated by the same actors reappearing throughout in various roles (some of whom are strongly implied to be reincarnations of previous characters), it tackles such “profound” themes as reincarnation, the interconnectivity of life, and the universality of the human experience. To read most reviews, Cloud Atlas is either a brilliant masterpiece or a colossal failure. Reality is neither extreme. Its rambling can keep viewers emotionally disconnected, but there are also fascinating segments and moving moments.
Like the book, the film consists of six stories which the narrative cuts back and forth between throughout.
“The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” takes place in 1849 onboard a ship in the Pacific Ocean traveling to the Chatham Islands, where young lawyer Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess), conducting a business arrangement on behalf of his slave-dealing father-in-law (Hugo Weaving), becomes morally conflicted when he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a stowaway slave (David Gyasi) who saves him from a greedy doctor (Tom Hanks).
In 1936 Edinburgh, “Letters from Zedelghem” tells the sad tale of young bisexual musician Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw), hiding from debts and a scandalous background, who comes to work at the estate of sickly composer Vyvyan Ayers (Jim Broadbent), where Frobisher composes his own masterpiece, “The Cloud Atlas Sextet” while writing letters back home to his lover Rufus Sixsmith (James D’Arcy). Along the way, Frobisher falls into an affair with Ayers’ wife (Halle Berry, playing a white Jewish woman), but fails to realize that Ayers, whom he views as a kindred spirit, is merely using him.
“Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery” takes place in 1973 San Francisco, where reporter Luisa Rey (Halle Berry) is tipped off by an elderly Rufus Sixsmith and a whistleblowing scientist (Tom Hanks) about a plot by a nuclear power plant director (Hugh Grant) to deliberately allow the reactor to melt down to discredit nuclear energy and benefit oil companies. Together with the plant’s security chief (Keith David), Luisa tries to expose the plot, but becomes the target of a hitman (Hugo Weaving).
“The Ghastly Tale of Timothy Cavendish” is a contemporary tale about a British publisher (Jim Broadbent), reaping a financial windfall after publishing a book by a notorious gangster (Tom Hanks), whose good fortune ends when he is betrayed by his spiteful brother (Hugh Grant buried under age makeup) and confined against his will in a nightmarish nursing home where patients are held like prisoners, run by the Nurse Ratched-esque Nurse Noakes (Hugo Weaving, playing a woman).
“An Orison of Sonmi-451” takes place in a futuristic Korea, where a fabricant (Doona Bae) is used as a figurehead for a rebellion and has a love affair with a young revolutionary (Jim Sturgess in makeup as an Asian man).
The sixth and chronologically final story, “Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’Ev’rythin’ After” is set in a distant post-apocalyptic future where civilization has collapsed and a primitive tribesman (Tom Hanks) agrees to guide a woman (Halle Berry) from a technologically advanced society into the mountains to find Cloud Atlas, a communications station where she can send a message to Earth’s colonies to be rescued, along the way evading cannibalistic savages (led by, of all people, an almost unrecognizable Hugh Grant) and plagued by his hallucinations of a demonic entity called “Old Georgie” (a likewise unrecognizable Hugo Weaving), who represents his fear.
This kind of sci-fi/philosophical flick could have easily gotten bogged down in dry, talky pontificating, but while Cloud Atlas clocks in at 160 minutes, the pace moves briskly, and the way we cut back and forth among the six stories means there’s not much time to get too bored with one story even when some are more compelling than others. There’s a lot of philosophical and thematic content here, but the movie is also entertaining. Unsurprisingly, Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis direct with a lot of visual flair. The special effects, showcased most prominently in the futuristic Sonmi-451 story, can stand alongside any other recent film, but the film serves up equally strikingly picturesque landscape shots for which no effects are used or needed. The fragmented structure interrupts the flow and momentum each story threatens to build up, and dilutes the impact of the individual tales, but a more linear chronological approach would also lose the interwoven tapestry effect and reduce the overall theme of interconnectivity. Of the six stories on hand, Luisa Rey’s story is the most compulsively entertaining, with some tension-fueled moments. Adam Ewing’s journey is compelling, and Sonmi’s is a thematically intriguing sci-fi, and both it and Robert Frobisher’s tale have effectively poignant conclusions. Cavendish’s ordeal, which has a more tongue-in-cheek tone than the others (as evidenced by Hugo Weaving playing a tyrannical female nurse), is delightfully entertaining, especially when the flustered Cavendish gets in cahoots with fellow senior citizens to plot an escape. On the other hand, Sloosha’s Crossin’, with dialogue often as unintelligible as its title, is less-than-riveting, and Zachry and Meronym wandering through the mountains quickly gets tedious, making us impatient to get back to one of the other stories.
One of the most interesting things the filmmakers chose to do was reuse the same core cast as different characters in multiple stories, to better convey the theme of interconnected lives. While Ben Whishaw’s only major role is Robert Frobisher, he makes small appearances in other stories (including a brief appearance as a woman). Likewise, James D’Arcy plays Rufus Sixsmith in two stories (the only actor to reprise the same character in more than one story) and has bit parts in a couple others. Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, and Jim Sturgess have major roles in several stories and cameos in others (some of them virtually unrecognizable). Susan Sarandon, Keith David, and Hugh Grant have supporting roles in several stories. South Korean actress Doona Bae, who plays Sonmi-451 with her natural appearance, also has a small role in “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing” as Ewing’s white wife. Likewise, at various points Jim Sturgess, James D’Arcy, and Hugo Weaving don makeup to play Asians, Halle Berry plays a white woman, Hugh Grant and James D’Arcy bury themselves beneath heavy age makeup, and, most amusingly, Hugo Weaving plays a woman. Unfortunately, considering how prominent they are in the movie, the makeup jobs are hit-and-miss. Jim Sturgess is surprisingly believable as an Asian man (Hugo Weaving less so), while Halle Berry’s white character looks a little weird and Doona Bae in particular is distractingly unconvincing as a white woman. Hugo Weaving, in addition to being hilarious enough as Nurse Noakes to make questionable makeup forgivable, is actually more believable as a woman than you might expect (this might not be as surprising to those who know of Weaving’s role as a drag queen in the 1994 Australian film Priscilla, Queen of the Desert).
There is also a running theme of reincarnation, driven home by repeating the same actors in different (or maybe not so different) roles, which is sometimes made more apparent than others. For example, Sonmi-451 and her lover Chang are obviously implied to be reincarnations of Adam Ewing and his wife Tilda, while others are more ambiguous. There seems to be a theme of certain souls evolving (or devolving) through their various lives. Tom Hanks begins as the money-grubbing, murderous Dr. Goose, and later plays the homicidal thug Dermot Hoggins, but seems to have his humanity brought to the surface when he interacts with his apparent soul mate Halle Berry. In The First Luisa Rey Mystery, he is knowingly going along with the nuclear meltdown plot until meeting Luisa and suffering a pang of conscience, confiding in his journal, “I just met her, and yet I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey”. Likewise, in the post-apocalyptic tale, Zachry overcomes his cowardice (embodied by “Old Georgie”) to guide Meronym through the mountains, completing the circle of Hanks’ soul beginning as a villain and ending as a heroic figure. On the other hand, Hugo Weaving and Hugh Grant start out unsavory and only descend further with every incarnation, starting out as slave-traders and ending as a demonic creature and the chief of a tribe of cannibalistic savages, respectively. Others don’t have such running arcs, but there are intriguing touches scattered around. In one life, Ben Whishaw plays the Cloud Atlas Sextet’s composer Robert Frobisher, while later he plays a music store owner who obsessively listens to the sextet. In every incarnation, Jim Sturgess plays an idealist fighting for freedom—Adam Ewing, who ultimately turns against slavery and becomes an abolitionist, revolutionary Chang, and a cameo as a rowdy Highlander who comes to Cavendish’s aid against Nurse Noakes—while Hugo Weaving fulfills the opposite extreme. In his every incarnation, he is some embodiment of oppressive social forces: a slaveowner, a hitman trying to silence whistleblowers, a tyrannical nurse, a member of a dictatorial futuristic government, and finally a hallucinatory embodiment of Zachry’s fear, goading him to give in. Agent Smith would fit right in.
Each story can be viewed as a stand-alone, but there are thin strands connecting each one, some of which may take repeat viewings to fully absorb. Robert Frobisher reads Adam Ewing’s journal. Luisa Rey has a sense of deja vu when she hears “The Cloud Atlas Sextet” in a music store (run by none other than Ben Whishaw, who in a previous life played its composer), because she was there when it was composed in another life decades ago. Timothy Cavendish reads a book based on the life of Luisa Rey. Sonmi-451 watches a movie based on the book Cavendish writes about his own experiences (with Tom Hanks in a cameo as the movie version of Cavendish). The primitive post-apocalyptic tribe in the “final” story worships Sonmi-451 as a deity.
Apart from the intriguing thematic content, it’s easy to see how actors would be attracted to a project like Cloud Atlas, where they get to show their chops by playing a variety of different characters all within the same movie, and the ensemble cast is admirably solid, especially considering the revolving doors of makeup and different identities, ethnicities, and even genders some of them are swept through. Tom Hanks gets the juiciest role(s), playing, among others, a weaselly doctor, a profanity-spewing, nearly unintelligible Scottish gangster who seems like he belongs in a Guy Ritchie movie (especially when he responds to a bad review of his book, “Knuckle Sandwich”, by throwing the critic off a roof), a whistleblowing nuclear scientist, an amusingly melodramatically exaggerated version of Jim Broadbent’s Timothy Cavendish, and a primitive tribesman. Halle Berry doesn’t have Hanks’ range, but she’s fine, especially as Luisa Rey. Jim Broadbent is solid, using his befuddled, bug-eyed semi-comedic manner to delightful effect as Timothy Cavendish, while playing it straighter as the self-serving, untrustworthy Vyvyan Ayers. Jim Sturgess is solid as both Adam Ewing and the futuristic revolutionary Chang, who share a vein of romantic idealism (and perhaps the same soul). Ben Whishaw (the young Q to Daniel Craig’s Bond) and James D’Arcy are both solid even though they each only appear in one major role (though both are scattered around in bit parts elsewhere). Hugo Weaving, still typecast as a villain ever since The Wachowskis’ 1999 sci-fi hit The Matrix, is the biggest constant as a “heavy”, including (among others) a ruthless hitman, a Nurse Ratched parody, and finally, as if hitting the apex of evil, a demonic entity. That’s fine, since Weaving can be villainous and sinister as well as anyone, but it’s almost amusing how, considering Hanks in particular gets to run the entire gamut of morality, Weaving is relegated to being a baddie. It’s also interesting to note that Hugh Grant, primarily known as a lovable comedian, has been cast as a series of unsavory characters, none of whom is comedic.
Cloud Atlas‘ fragmented structure is both a strength and a weakness. Many of the goosebump-inducing moments come from some character or other having a flicker of “memory” from one of their other stories, or realizing some connection, but it’s also frustrating to interrupt an exciting moment from Luisa or Sonmi’s story to detour into Zachry and Meronym tiresomely traipsing through the mountains, and the rambling structure dilutes the impact and results in a disconnect from the material. At the end of the day, despite its undeniable ambition, its aiming high with weighty philosophical statements—sometimes spelled out for us in overly heavyhanded, pretentious dialogue—and its obvious aiming for profundity and greatness, Cloud Atlas is less than the sum of its parts, and not as deep or profound as it likes to think it is. That said, the movie is, far more often than not, both entertaining and interesting, and there are fascinating and moving moments. A movie that dares to take an ambitious, unconventional path and has things it’s trying to say, even if it doesn’t always entirely chew what it has bitten off, is far more laudable than the dime a dozen generic action shootouts or romantic comedies that are content to dwell in a highly-populated middle ground of mediocrity. Cloud Atlas is a flawed experiment, but it cannot be accused of being generic.
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