http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/movies/cloud-atlas-from-lana-and-andy-wachowski-and-tom-tykwer.html?_r=0&pagewanted=allMovie ReviewSouls Tangled Up in Time:Cloud Atlas From Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom TykwerBy A. O. SCOTT
Published: October 25, 2012Halle Berry and Tom Hanks in “Cloud Atlas.” In 1849 a businessman on a Melville-esque sea voyage in the South Pacific battles a mysterious illness and shelters a runaway slave.
In 1936 Robert Frobisher, a penniless young composer, flees Cambridge for Edinburgh to join the household of a vain and temperamental maestro. Four decades later an alternative-press journalist risks her life investigating safety problems at a nuclear power plant.
In our own day a feckless book publisher finds himself trapped in a nursing home. Sometime in the corporate, totalitarian future a member of the genetically engineered serving class, a fast-food worker named
Sonmi-451, is drawn into rebellion, while in a still more distant, postapocalyptic, neo-tribal future (where Sonmi is worshiped as a deity), a Hawaiian goatherd. ...
That last one is a little more complicated, involving a devil, marauders on horseback and the possibility of interplanetary travel. It is also where the spoilers dwell. In any case, these half-dozen stories are the components of
“Cloud Atlas,” David Mitchell's wondrous 2004 novel, now lavishly adapted for the screen by
Lana and
Andy Wachowski and
Tom Tykwer.
“Cloud Atlas” is a movie about migratory souls and wayward civilizations, loaded with soaring themes and flights of feeling, as vaporous and comprehensive as its title. Big ideas, or at least earnest intellectual conceits, crowd the screen along with suave digital effects and gaudy costumes. Free will battles determinism. Solidarity faces off against domination. Belief in a benevolent cosmic order contends with fidelity to the cruel Darwinian maxim that “the weak are meat the strong do eat.”
Describing this movie, despite its lofty ambitions, can feel like an exercise in number crunching, and watching it is a bit like doing a series of math problems in your head. How do three directors parcel six plots into 172 minutes? (And how much might that cost?) Which actor — most of them inhabit several roles, in some cases changing gender or skin color as well as costume, accent and hairstyle — tackles the widest range of characters? What is the correlation between a musical phrase and a comet-shaped birthmark? How many times does
Hugo Weaving sneer?
Maybe the achievement of “Cloud Atlas” should be quantified rather than judged in more conventional, qualitative ways. This is by no means the best movie of the year, but it may be the most movie you can get for the price of a single ticket. It blends farce, suspense, science fiction, melodrama and quite a bit more, not into an approximation of Mr. Mitchell’s graceful and virtuosic pastiche, but rather into an unruly grab bag of styles, effects and emotions held together, just barely, by a combination of outlandish daring and humble sincerity. Together the filmmakers try so hard to give you everything — the secrets of the universe and the human heart; action, laughs and romance; tragedy and mystery — that you may wind up feeling both grateful and disappointed.
Though the six sections flow together more or less seamlessly, it is also possible to divide the movie into Wachowski and Tykwer halves. Mr. Tykwer’s contributions are those that take place closer to the present — they concern the composer, the journalist and the publisher — whereas the Wachowskis leap back to the past and forward into the future. They are less concerned with efficient storytelling than with the maximization of spectacular and intellectual impact, with blowing your mind and explaining the cosmos. The Wachowski chapters are bigger, grander and noisier, while Mr. Tykwer’s are tighter, funnier and more emotionally resonant. The tale of Frobisher is perhaps the only piece that could stand alone, a perfect novella of artistic rivalry, sexual misbehavior and poetic despair.
Considering it in isolation is difficult, however, and contrary to the film’s design. A major difference between the movie and its source is structural. Mr. Mitchell nests his plots inside one another, splitting each one to make room for the others and making his book into something like a set of Russian dolls or a turducken. Mr. Tykwer and the Wachowskis — abetted by the heroic editing of
Alexander Berner — have abandoned this symmetrical literary design, opting for the more cinematically manageable technique of crosscutting. The narrative strands are woven together, elegantly plaited and quilted at some points, tangled and snarled in others. Connective tissue is supplied by music (composed by
Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek and Mr. Tykwer), by voice-overs and visual echoes, and also by the reappearance of the same actors in elaborate but nonetheless transparent disguises. Mr. Weaving, for example, memorably pops up as a devil, a Victorian capitalist, a sadistic female nurse, a corporate-totalitarian bureaucrat and a hit man.
Zachry the goatherd is played by
Tom Hanks, sporting facial tattoos and speaking in a futuristic pidgin. (In Zachry’s language, “aye” means “yes,” “cog” means “know” and “true-true” means “very true indeed.”) Mr. Hanks also plays, among other roles, a scientist who aids the journalist’s investigation, a London gangster and a 19th-century quack attending to
Adam Ewing, the ailing South Seas traveler. (That poor fellow is played by
Jim Sturgess.) The muckraking journalist,
Luisa Rey, is
Halle Berry. She also appears as
Meronym, who visits Zachry’s island as part of a delegation of technologically advanced researchers. And she is almost unrecognizable as
Jocasta Ayrs, married to the temperamental maestro, played by
Jim Broadbent. He is, elsewhere, a ship’s captain and the luckless publisher
Timothy Cavendish.
You see what I mean about quantity. Simply enumerating the rest of the cast members and saying what they do would turn this review into a Domesday Book of postmodern film acting. And identifying the flavors of ham they import to the proceedings would require an advanced degree in charcuterie. There is, in any case, a lot of acting here. It is delivered by the bushel, by the truckload, by the schooner, and the quality varies.
Mr. Broadbent is, as ever, delightful, and
Ben Whishaw is perfect as the witty and passionate Frobisher.
Hugh Grant indulges in some sly, vulgar villainy, with impressive prosthetic teeth, and
Susan Sarandon floats through a few scenes trailing mists of love and weary wisdom. As Sonmi, the South Korean actress
Doona Bae is a haunting, somber presence.
Sonmi awakens from a life of grim deprivation — a condition of slavery that is horrible to contemplate and horrifyingly easy to imagine — into an awareness of the possibility of freedom. The tale of how she recovers her humanity (and the cost she pays for it) becomes scripture in Zachry’s time, and her fate is also the allegorical key to the rest of “Cloud Atlas.” In every chapter powerful forces work to constrain, exploit and otherwise suppress the individual and collective desire for liberation. Alliances form between victims and sympathetic members of the race or caste in power, and even when their efforts are doomed, they manage to keep some hope alive for the future.
Mr. Tykwer and the Wachowskis emphasize the spiritual rather than the political dimensions of Mr. Mitchell’s novel and at the same time make his meanings less elusive and more accessible. Perhaps too much so. “Cloud Atlas” aspires to be a perception-altering head trip in the tradition of
“2001: A Space Odyssey” and
“The Matrix.” But instead of leaving you trembling in contemplation of metaphysical mysteries, it succumbs to the term-paperish explication that weighed down
“V for Vendetta” and the second and third “Matrix” movies. Its reach is admirable, but its grasp is, if anything, too secure.
For a movie devoted to the celebration of freedom, “Cloud Atlas” works awfully hard to control and contain its meanings, to tell you exactly what it is about rather than allowing you to dream and wonder within its impressively imagined world.
The movie insists — repeatedly and didactically — that a thread of creative, sustaining possibility winds its way through all human history, glimmering even in its darkest hours. A beautiful notion, and possibly true. But unfortunately not quite true-true.
“Cloud Atlas” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has nudity, violence and sexuality, past, present and future.
Cloud Atlas Opens on Friday nationwide. Written and directed by Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski, based on the novel by David Mitchell; directors of photography, John Toll and Frank Griebe; edited by Alexander Berner; music by Mr. Tykwer, Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil; production design by Uli Hanisch and Hugh Bateup; costumes by Kym Barrett and Pierre-Yves Gayraud; produced by Grant Hill, Stefan Arndt, Ms. Wachowski, Mr. Tykwer and Mr. Wachowski; released by Warner Brothers Pictures. Running time: 2 hours 52 minutes. WITH: Tom Hanks (Dr. Henry Goose/Hotel Manager/Isaac Sachs/Dermot Hoggins/Cavendish Look-Alike Actor/Zachry),
Halle Berry (Native Woman/Jocasta Ayrs/Luisa Rey/Indian Party Guest/Ovid/Meronym),
Jim Broadbent (Captain Molyneux/Vyvyan Ayrs/Timothy Cavendish/Korean Musician/Prescient 2),
Hugo Weaving (Haskell Moore/Tadeusz Kesselring/Bill Smoke/Nurse Noakes/Boardman Mephi/Old Georgie),
Jim Sturgess (Adam Ewing/Poor Hotel Guest/Megan’s Dad/Highlander/Hae-Joo Chang/Adam/Zachry Brother-in-Law),
Doona Bae (Tilda/Megan’s Mom/Mexican Woman/Sonmi-451/Sonmi-451/Sonmi Prostitute),
Ben Whishaw (Cabin Boy/Robert Frobisher/Store Clerk/Georgette/Tribesman),
Keith David (Kupaka/Joe Napier/An-Kor Apis/Prescient),
James D’Arcy (Young Rufus Sixsmith/Old Rufus Sixsmith/Nurse James/Archivist),
Xun Zhou (Talbot/Hotel Manager/Yoona-939/Rose),
David Gyasi (Autua/Lester Rey/Duophysite),
Susan Sarandon (Madame Horrox/Older Ursula/Yusouf Suleiman/Abbess)
and
Hugh Grant (the Rev. Giles Horrox/Hotel Heavy/Lloyd Hooks/Denholme Cavendish/Seer Rhee/Kona Chief).