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| No caption can aptly describe the pure, unadulterated wonder this film inspires |
I'd like to specify quickly, while I have so much love (and in some respects, loyalty) towards this movie, I am going to be looking at the good and bad points of it. No film is perfect, I'm not the type of person to let my enjoyment of a piece block any flaw from sight or critical analysis. This is going to be a discussion of the film as a whole, occasional warts and all. I'm not going to try and be objective in this review, because that would be impossible for me, but I'm not going to skip any failings because of my own fangirling. One final note before I begin analysis, this film was a critic devider. Any reviews I've seen or read of this are very mixed and usually polarised. Not to seem patronising or overly artsy but I get the sense that people who found this film "unnecessarily confusing" or "trying too hard" or even offensive have missed a lot of the point of this film. That sounds incredibly douchey of me but I'll stand by it.
Right, now that's dealt with, what is this movie about? Well, at the increased risk of sounding pretentious and artsy, it's kind of difficult to explain. It's based on a really long book by David Mitchell and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer. To give people who haven't seen it a little insight, here's a trailer:
- The first of these storylines is led by Adam Ewing, a sick lawyer helping with a slave trade in 1849s, sailing to San Francisco.
- The second focuses on a young musician, Robert Frobisher, who becomes apprentice to a famed composer in 1936.
- The next is a journalist, Louisa Ray investigating a conspiracy involving a new nuclear reactor in 1973.
- Fourth is a book publisher and writer, Timothy Cavendish who accidentally ends up trapped in a nursing home, in 2012.
- Then there's a "fabricant" worker, Sonmi-451 in a fast food restaurant in new Seoul in 22nd Century.
- Finally, Zachary a tribe member, who guides a "prescient" visitor called Meronym to the top of a mountain in return for saving his niece. This final takes place a post apocalyptic 2321 according to the book.
It primarily explores the idea of interconnected fates, how everything and everyone are connected to each other and make up the intricate tapestry of the universe. It also looks at some more tangible issues such as corruption, betrayal, human nature and prejudice. Prejudice in particular is dealt with cleverly in this film. Each story deals with one form of prejudice, one flaw in human thinking as it were:
1. Racism (there's a black slave stowaway in Ewing's cabin, who befriends him)
2. Homophobia (Frobisher is bisexual)
3. Sexism (Louisa Ray is met with sexist attitudes as she works for a feminist magazine)
4. Agism (Cavendish is in his 70s)
5. Elitism (or keeping down of the working class, the whole slavery idea)
6. Xenophobia (the tribe is wary, sometimes hostile towards the prescients because they're foreign)
It's interesting because the anti-prejudice message is not all that stressed and some people who I've spoken to about the movie missed the prejudice motif. I see this as a good thing. It means that the message is there but the most important part is the character's journey. I think the fact that we're so used to having anti prejudice messages waved in the air and bludgeoned into is in popular media is why it comes across as subtle, because when you think about it, it's not really that subtle it just goes a little under the radar.
Each story is connected to the last with something, usually a telling of that previous story. For example, Robert Frobisher is reading Adam Ewing's diaries of the voyage, Sonmi-451 watches a film about the "Ghastly ordeal of Timothy Cavendish", a screenplay which he was writing in his story. Something that kind of threw me the first time I watched this film was that there's a distinctive stone in Zachary's story that is reprised in Adam's story. This led me to believe that the time in this movie was more cyclic than a straight line, as it was probably intended. It still works with the message of interconnected lives and the stories that are told in different incarnations over and over. From a storytelling standpoint this movie is also interesting because of the patterns (highlighted by the repeated character pairings) which are a visual reminder of how little human nature has changed and is likely to change over time.
Anyway, that's what the movie's about. There is much more to come, folks, it's a long-ass movie so this is gonna be a long-ass review. Don't worry, I'm going to try and keep some of the psychobabblic, English essay material to a low from now on and talk about more accessible things. I will be speaking as if you've seen the movie so this is a cautionary, POSSIBLE SPOILERS warning here.
A little thing you need to know about me to understand why I loved this movie so intensely. The way my mind works is quite... manic. As a kid I always liked fast things, fun things, running around for no reason, you know the sort. A lot of this, while it has been naturally watered down for sociability reasons, is still true today, especially in what attracts me to a film. I also consider myself a smart person (IQ averaging 125: above average) so I like things that engage my powers of deduction, things that I can "get" that other people maybe won't and things that make me feel smart. Why did I enjoy this movie so much?
Thanks Doctor, you always know what to say. All jokes aside, I liked this movie for many of the same reasons that I like movies such as Memento and Sherlock (that's BBC tv show, but each episode is effectively a movie). It's why I liked "Q and A", the book on which Slumdog Millionaire is based on, a truly fabulous read if you like this sort of thing, better than the film in my opinion, though that was good too. I digress. I like films that are somewhat interactive. I'm that one kid in English class who's constantly voicing theories and notes to the teacher because she's over-thought things and has to participate (seriously, ask anyone). When it comes to movies there's a slight downgrade in interactivity from books, you can just sit on your ass and let the movie wash over you without much thought on your part. This has become the appeal of film for many of the, um, (how do I put this without sounding like a terrible person?) less academic members of the public. Movies are more fun than reading books. Because reading takes effort. And literacy (Dammit, I was so close!).
Now I'm all for laziness but with something I'm as passionate about as stories and storytelling, I like being involved. I can't sit at the back of the classroom with my hand down the whole time, that's boring. I need to get engrossed in the story and if there's something that I need to focus on or a mystery I've to try and figure out before the protagonist, all the better. This movie had that by the bucketload. You literally couldn't look away because then you might miss something. Not even something vital, something as simple as a waistcoat that was in another facet of the story or a sliver of thought that was repeated. Little things like that totally suck me in, I need to collect them all, connect all the dots.
This seems to be a common theme with nerd culture. Nerds are attracted to the same things because they engage them. Shows like Star Trek, Doctor Who and a lot of anime have such huge nerd followings because so many of the plot points are so contrived and out there. People who don't want to participate don't bother to try and put these things together but people who are smart enough and committed enough do, and that's rewarding so they come back. They form loyalties, they theorise, they expand on what they know to figure out what they don't. It's story maths, you're given X and Y, find Z (I also really like maths). This is why I
(Last point on this, I also have a thing for stories within stories, I love that meta stuff. I even wrote a short play indulging my love for dual and triple parallel plot lines)
Anyway, wasn't I reviewing a movie? Oh, yeah, Cloud Atlas. What else made this film awesome? The characters were incredibly engaging and well fleshed out, ten minutes into each separate story and you feel as if you know them. Considering that there are six this is quite a feat, especially when so many films can't even make their one protagonist interesting. This film has such an epic feel to it (I know I've said this before but it's so true it warrants repeating). The music is fabulous, the one "Cloud Atlas Sextet" in all its different forms stretching and winding itself into every storyline so well. The use of the same characters worked really well for the narrative and it's nice looking back when you realise that in the case of the two main couples (Halle Berry and Tom Hanks' characters have two love storylines, as do Jim Sturgess and Doona Bae) for the one tragic ending they get a happy ending in another life. It's difficult to say whether or not the end of this film is a happy one, many of the characters lead tragic and short lives, others have the pain eased by passing the years away with a loved one. I think it's a commentary on life as a whole; life has high points and low points, endings and beginnings, when one story ends sadly there is always another happy ending. Going back to the music, this encapsulates this emotion and these ideas phenomenally with quite subdued stretches and great orchestral surges.
There's really always going to be something to like in this film. Timothy Cavendish's story is light hearted and funny, Louisa Ray's story has suspense and mystery, you have futuristic action scenes, an inventive, fantastical and dangerous would in which Zachary's tribe lives.
Now, I promised I was going to look at this critically so here are some potential bad points about this film. The first is probably that it's so long. The running time is almost three hours and while I personally enjoyed every moment I can see how one might find it tiring, especially keeping up with all the stories. There's that as well, I mentioned earlier that I like the constant motion and intrigue and all the little things to watch out for. It you aren't like me it's plausible that you'd need to sleep this movie off from the strain. If you're anything like my Mum and Sister (ie. constantly asking questions because you can't wait for the film to tell you who or what something is) this maybe isn't the film for you.
There are some slight issues with accents:
(Disclaimer: I apologise for the god awful quality of everything in this video, I had this one idea and it took much longer to film than anticipated, especially considering I was doing all the camerawork myself (can you tell?) Then I couldn't edit it because my laptop is slow as hell, but I couldn't just not put it up at that point. Technology, why do you hate me?)
Another little qualm is that, because different people are different, they're likely to favour one or two of the storylines over others. This is great when the focus is on those storylines but one might find themselves waiting for a storyline they like less to finish because they want to get back to their favourite one. I found this a wee bit with the Adam Ewing sections, I just wanted to get back to the Sonmi parts. It also felt like Robert Frobisher's bits were shorter than others'. That's the nature of variety though, you're probably going to like something but that may make it worse for the things you don't like as much.
One issue that more negative critics touched upon was the race-changing roles in this. As I mentioned in my vloggy bit, there are some interchangeable nationalities and genders featured. Most of the characters are in "Asia-face" for some part of the Sonmi storyline and some viewers thought this to be racist. I get the feeling that these people are clutching at straws with their nitpickiness. The message of the over arcing story is stressing that things such as race, age, sexuality, gender and nationality are arbitrary in the grand scheme of things and on top of that it's quite obviously against prejudice, as I've previously mentioned. You can go ahead and think that it's racist, that's your opinion, but I ask you to examine the actual definition of the word. Racism is hatred or hostility towards people of different race to yourself. The way that the future Koreans are portrayed in the film is not in any way negative, not any more than any other race in the movie, that is. I'm not going to be persnickety and defend the idea that "technically it's not racist because future Koreans aren't a race yet", they're still recognisable. There was no uproar at Hugo Weaving playing a female character (or indeed most of the man playing wonem at some point) or Halle Berry playing an old Asian man (that's all the issues in one little, really difficult to spot bundle). Is the cross dressing more acceptable because the Pythons did it? Like, a lot? Are we really so insecure in the multiracial society of today that we can't make observations and replicate things? Maybe it's like the whole "white people can't say nigger" thing (I can because I'm Irish. Our oppressive history is less to do with race and more to do with the British fucking with our shit. Also, we had Phil Lynott) Speaking of, they do actually say the "n-word" in the Adam Ewing section, and that appears to have received much less negativity, I suppose because the time period in which it's set means that it was a normal thing. I feel this particular criticism to be a stretching things a tad but I guess it counts as something against this movie, that one factor might make certain people uncomfortable.
Overall, I thought this was an incredibly engaging, creative and enjoyable film. The settings were great, the costumes intricate, the characters believable, the message profound. It is , in my eyes, everything a film should aspire to be. I loved every moment and I highly recommend that you watch it, if even to disagree with me. And to get a look at Jim Sturgess' Asia-face. I think it's pretty cool. Doona Bae makes a kickass mexican woman.
Embrace the Madness
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