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At the movies: Cloud Atlas
Monday, November 26th, 2012 01:38 pmWithout getting into any spoiler-ific territory, I can safely say that watching this has thrown down the gauntlet for me to read the book it's based on, or die of curiosity. Many readers thought the book was un-film-able, and now I'm dying to find out what was left out, and what structures could not be repeated... because there was so much detail jammed into 2 hours and 45 minutes that I got the distinct impression that more was excised.
I'm trying to think of a succinct, clever thing to say about this movie and coming out with very little. Images from it have leap into my mind's eye ever since I saw it, including the sublime (two gay men, unable to break free from the societal conventions of the 1930's share a dream in which they smash plates and vases in a china shop, in slow motion), the disturbing (the future's answer to "Soylent Green" is predictably depressing and horrific in the large scale), the outright strange and distracting (Jim Sturgess in yellow-face, Tom Hanks in cockney British thug-face, both equally terribly executed), the empowering (a journalist cheating death as she swims to the surface of the ocean), and the recurring--a dichroic glass bead, other people's letters, a piece of music, etc. etc. And not since the haunting graphic novel "Air" have I thought so much about different characters plummeting to their deaths. This is the first movie in a long time where I immediately wanted to watch it again, to see images that went by too quickly or too slowly, and to try to come to grips with the incredibly ambitious and often nebulous collection of themes the story presented.
The interwoven narratives, six of them, come together mostly very easily. (In fact, the editing in this film, although a little ham-handedly obvious a few times, thoroughly deserves to sweep the Oscars this year.) At times, I wanted to stick with one narrative longer than the camera lingered, particularly during the parts in the future of Neo-Seoul, with its bright lights and eye-popping design aspects. But after the first few jumps, I settled into the rhythm of the story and just let things happen, content in the knowledge that we would get around to everything that I wanted to see. With many modern films, I find that 20 minutes could have been erased from the middle, saggy portion of the script, but in this case, I don't really think so. Six stories, all given an equal amount of time, really did take up all that space, and although I could have done with a little less incomprehensible pidgin English in the post-Apocalyptic storyline, it was time well-spent.
That said, I don't want to make it sound like this was a flawless work. The most egregious problem is the one that's generated the most controversy: the aspects of the story that necessitated the actors dressing in yellow-face. Put simply, it's distracting and weird. Jim Sturgess, James D'Arcy, and several others simply are not Asian, and no amount of make-up is really going to make them look anything except odd. (In the case of Jim Sturgess, I kept wondering when the glob of make-up on his forehead was going to collapse onto his face.) I understand that the way this story works, you need to have visual links to previous narratives, but there has to be a better way to do that, like colorblind casting from the get-go. Other distracting casting choices were Tom Hanks as a Cockney thug turned writer (people around me snickered with disbelief and surprise when he came on screen in this role, which thankfully lasted less than five minutes) and Hugo Weaving in drag. (This is not to say that drag is a bad thing, or that Hugo Weaving is bad in drag--this particular role was just plain weird.)
However, I firmly believe that despite its problems, this is a challenging and engaging piece of movie-making, and I am incredibly glad I had a chance to see it on the big screen, instead of waiting for the DVD. Parts of it are incredibly heartfelt and sad, and other parts of it are thrilling yet foolish entertainment. Awkward casting aside, this film is a bittersweet meditation on freedom and its definitions, and well worth seeing, discussing, and obsessing over for weeks and months to come. The book is now at the top of my to-read list.
I'm trying to think of a succinct, clever thing to say about this movie and coming out with very little. Images from it have leap into my mind's eye ever since I saw it, including the sublime (two gay men, unable to break free from the societal conventions of the 1930's share a dream in which they smash plates and vases in a china shop, in slow motion), the disturbing (the future's answer to "Soylent Green" is predictably depressing and horrific in the large scale), the outright strange and distracting (Jim Sturgess in yellow-face, Tom Hanks in cockney British thug-face, both equally terribly executed), the empowering (a journalist cheating death as she swims to the surface of the ocean), and the recurring--a dichroic glass bead, other people's letters, a piece of music, etc. etc. And not since the haunting graphic novel "Air" have I thought so much about different characters plummeting to their deaths. This is the first movie in a long time where I immediately wanted to watch it again, to see images that went by too quickly or too slowly, and to try to come to grips with the incredibly ambitious and often nebulous collection of themes the story presented.
The interwoven narratives, six of them, come together mostly very easily. (In fact, the editing in this film, although a little ham-handedly obvious a few times, thoroughly deserves to sweep the Oscars this year.) At times, I wanted to stick with one narrative longer than the camera lingered, particularly during the parts in the future of Neo-Seoul, with its bright lights and eye-popping design aspects. But after the first few jumps, I settled into the rhythm of the story and just let things happen, content in the knowledge that we would get around to everything that I wanted to see. With many modern films, I find that 20 minutes could have been erased from the middle, saggy portion of the script, but in this case, I don't really think so. Six stories, all given an equal amount of time, really did take up all that space, and although I could have done with a little less incomprehensible pidgin English in the post-Apocalyptic storyline, it was time well-spent.
That said, I don't want to make it sound like this was a flawless work. The most egregious problem is the one that's generated the most controversy: the aspects of the story that necessitated the actors dressing in yellow-face. Put simply, it's distracting and weird. Jim Sturgess, James D'Arcy, and several others simply are not Asian, and no amount of make-up is really going to make them look anything except odd. (In the case of Jim Sturgess, I kept wondering when the glob of make-up on his forehead was going to collapse onto his face.) I understand that the way this story works, you need to have visual links to previous narratives, but there has to be a better way to do that, like colorblind casting from the get-go. Other distracting casting choices were Tom Hanks as a Cockney thug turned writer (people around me snickered with disbelief and surprise when he came on screen in this role, which thankfully lasted less than five minutes) and Hugo Weaving in drag. (This is not to say that drag is a bad thing, or that Hugo Weaving is bad in drag--this particular role was just plain weird.)
However, I firmly believe that despite its problems, this is a challenging and engaging piece of movie-making, and I am incredibly glad I had a chance to see it on the big screen, instead of waiting for the DVD. Parts of it are incredibly heartfelt and sad, and other parts of it are thrilling yet foolish entertainment. Awkward casting aside, this film is a bittersweet meditation on freedom and its definitions, and well worth seeing, discussing, and obsessing over for weeks and months to come. The book is now at the top of my to-read list.
