Cloud Atlas: Don't Let It Go Unnoticed Again

Written and directed by Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski
Based on the novel by David Mitchell

I’m in two minds when it comes to the state of film in 2013. Whereas some of my favourite films have been released in the last few years, it’s also easy to see some pretty disturbing trends, as with the exception of Inception, every one of the biggest movies being released recently have been based on a comic book, a sequel/prequel, the latest adaptation of the latest trendy bit of teenage girl literature, or some combination of all three.

Again, I’m not complaining about the existence of these movies, as films like The Dark Knight Rises pretty much showcase the exact reason I am interested in film, and even the ones I have no interest in, and am irritated by (the Twilight saga for instance) have a right to exist... I’m not a part of that film’s target audience and was never going to be. No point complaining about it. But there’s still a growing longing for something a bit different. Something not afraid to do things that are hardly ever done in movies.

Enter Cloud Atlas sometime last year. An adaptation of the novel by David Mitchell, brought to life by Lana and Andy Wachowski (the masterminds behind The Matrix), and German director Tom Tykwer, known for his work on the bizarre Run Lola Run. It’s a novel that many thought would be impossible to adapt into a movie, and these three directors managed to pull it off with a style that makes it look easy. It is very definitely a movie that was different to anything else released this decade so far... and upon release it was almost completely ignored by the general public.

Next week, Cloud Atlas is being released on Blu-Ray and DVD in the UK (it’s been out in the US for a couple of months already), and I suspect it’s going to be one of those movies that becomes a cult classic with its home release based on word of mouth, so I thought I’d contribute to that word of mouth a little.

So what exactly is Cloud Atlas? And what makes it so different? Well... it’s six movies in one to begin with. Six separate stories set between the 19^th and 24^th centuries that share themes, a cast (gender and race be damned), references to each other, and a bit of a reincarnation subtext.

In 1849, Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) is taken ill aboard a ship on a voyage around the Pacific and whilst being treated by Dr. Henry Goose (Tom Hanks), he keeps a journal, and witnesses the horrors of slavery first hand.

In 1936, a young musician named Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw – the new Q, who should also be the new Doctor) escapes his debts to become amanuensis to his idol, the composer Vyvyan Ayrs (Jim Broadbent). In between his duty, he composes his own work – the ‘Cloud Atlas Sextet’ – reads Adam Ewing’s Pacific Journal, and writes letters to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith (James D’Arcy).

In 1973, Luisa Rey (Halle Berry) is a journalist with a disreputable magazine who stumbles upon a scandal after a chance meeting with nuclear physicist Rufus Sixsmith (James D’Arcy again, this time in heavy “old person” make-up). Her subsequent investigation of the new nuclear power station and its owner Lloyd Hooks (Hugh Grant) puts her life in danger from a ruthless assassin called Bill Smoke (Hugo Weaving). During her investigation, she reads Sixsmith’s letters from Frobisher.

In 2012, book publisher Timothy Cavendish (Jim Broadbent) goes on the run some Irish mobsters who want their jailed brother Dermot’s (Tom Hanks) royalties, and ends up trapped in an old folk’s home. This is the most humourous of the six stories in the movie, which sees Cavendish team up with others to stage a jailbreak, but Hugo Weaving in drag as Nurse Noakes still manages to be scary. In his time at the home, Cavendish reads the Luisa Rey story, presented as a mystery novel.

In 2144, Sonmi-451 (Doona Bae) is a “fabricant” designed to serve as a waitress at a Papa Song’s restaurant in a dystopian future worldwide “corpocracy”. Breaking free of her shackles, Sonmi joins Hae-joo Chang and a terrorist group on a mission to free the world. During her adventure, Sonmi watches a movie named ‘The Ghastly Ordeal Of Timothy Cavendish’.

And “106 winters after The Fall”, a world that has regressed to the few surviving humans living in tribes without any technology is soon to be disrupted by the arrival of a “prescient” – basically, a group of humans who have managed to retain their civilisation – played by Halle Berry. Zachry (Tom Hanks) is a member of a tribe that is haunted by raids by the cannibalistic Kona (led by an unrecognisable Hugh Grant), is haunted by his past deeds in the form of a Satan-like creature named Old Georgie (Hugo Weaving), and is given the task of protecting the prescient, despite his distrust of her “smart”. Sonmi-451 has passed into legend as the deity of Tom Hanks’ tribe, with her message treated as a holy text.

The lead character in each story has a birthmark on some part of their body in the shape of a comet which one hint (there are others in there) that this is all one soul travelling through time. A secondary reincarnation plot that I’ve seen mentioned by the directors that doesn’t actually seem to be present in the film is that all of Tom Hanks’ characters also share a soul, and it’s about his journey to heroism. It’s one way to read it, I suppose, but this was a $100 million movie that had to find independent financing, because studio’s didn’t want to touch something so different, so I imagine Tom Hanks’ involvement was emphasised by the directors in order to secure funding.

All in all, though, it’s a movie that shouldn’t work at all, but due to some of the best editing I’ve seen in a long time (with the six stories intersecting with each other, cutting between them more and more frequently as the action picks up, as opposed to the format of the novel which told half of each story moving forward in time, and finished each story moving backwards) it is actually an extremely coherent, inspiring movie that manages to marry each of the different genres it tackles successfully.

In fact, if there are any film nerds out there, the editing kind of reminds me of the 1916 epic ‘Intolerance’ – D.W. Griffiths’ follow-up to his KKK-idolising ‘The Birth Of A Nation’ – which similarly features different stories in different time periods intersecting with increasing regularity, ironically each showcasing kinds of intolerance throughout the ages (though that movie didn’t have the same cast in each story).

Less successful is some of the make-up effects used to change the races of actors – in particular the ones that make the white actors look like Romulans rather than Koreans. Despite the controversy, though, this decision is not in the slightest bit racist, and the film wouldn’t work as well unless they kept the same cast throughout, so this was necessary. There are also Asian and black actors in the film who change races, so it isn’t just a “blackface” situation to avoid casting non-white people in the significant roles.

One of these Asian actors is the fantastic Doona Bae, who as Sonmi-451 left me mesmerised every time she was on-screen. I’m a sci-fi fan anyway, so it was probably inevitable that I was going to gravitate towards that part of the film more than the others, but with Doona Bae in the lead it really was the stand-out for me. And surprisingly, the Robert Frobisher story is also a stand-out portion of the film, with Ben Whishaw’s performance also being fantastic.

Please pick this movie up on DVD/Blu Ray. Obviously, this isn’t a movie that everyone will love, and you might not be able to understand everything in one viewing, but the joy of films being released to watch at home is that you can watch them multiple times, and even if you don’t love it on the first attempt, it can grow on you on repeat viewings. Cloud Atlas never received the credit it deserved in the cinema, and it shouldn’t be overlooked again.