So then, where to begin with this? Cloud Atlas, the new Tom Tykwer/Wachowski’s film adapted from David Mitchell’s massively successful novel of the same name; an ambitious, time-traveling epic narrative on fate and history.
Many suggested on hearing of this film’s production that it couldn’t be done, and to cut to the chase (something the film could learn from) it turns out it can’t.
How a near three-hour film can be so rushed and unfocused that it seems to properly adapt this it would need to be a TV series, except LOST has already been and gone and people had a lot more patience with that.
As much of an open-mind that I tried to keep with Cloud Atlas, I felt my resistance to it being slowly worn down as we switched from one exotic time zone and location to another with no real purpose or abandon, hackneyed meaning forced upon me followed by terribly base humor and unnecessary ultra-violence.
It’s hard to even begin saying what is wrong with Cloud Atlas because there is so much inherently wrong with it, it’s a fairly overwhelming task; much more consuming then actually attempting to watch the thing.
It would perhaps be best to start with the few positives I can find in it.
The main one being the ever-watchable Ben Whishaw, a rising star within contemporary British actors, who though is beginning to run the risk of becoming typecast, is pretty much always a sure-fire to provide an enjoyable turn.
His main role (of which he and the entire cast have many – more on that later) as Robert Frobisher in the 1930’s Edinburgh set narrative “Letters from Zedelghem” is by far the most watchable of the six.
Here Whishaw escapes scandal from his lover Rufus Sixthsmith (James D’Arcy) to become an aid to the famous composer Vyvian Ayrs (Jim Broadbent) only to sleep both with Vyvian’s wife (a white Halle Berrie; again, more on this later) and make a pass on Ayrs himself.
Even this story starts to become rather confused when Frobisher becomes nothing more than a seemingly horny teenager, but his banter and interactions with Broadbent are one of the few amusing scenes in a film that has many horribly misjudged attempts.
Equally, the always enjoyable Hugo Weaving is pretty consistently great throughout, though because of the Wachowski connection, one can’t help but think he’s about to say “Mr. Anderson” at any minute.
Though this is mostly for his Gollum-like performance as Old Georgie, or Zachry (Tom Hanks)’s vision of the Devil, in the post-apocalyptic narrative.
Weaving’s Georgie is one of the few genuinely menacing things about this film, constantly taunting Zachry in an occasionally heavy-handed attempt to return to religious fear.
It’s a good thing too, because the post-apocalyptic storyline is probably the most aggravating (though it’s hard to judge a race to the bottom) given all the characters speak in an infuriatingly non-understandable vaguely southern Delta dialect for no apparent reason other than to let Tom Hanks do an accent he can do for a change.
Otherwise Weaving makes the best of a bad bunch, his colonial overlord Haskell Moore is embarrassingly badly written to the point of ridicule, his German-Jew with a Hitler mustache in 1936 is utterly bizarre, his 70s hitman is him at his most Matrix, and then there’s the rather unfortunate case of Nurse Noakes.
Now seems appropriate to go into one of the many central problems with Cloud Atlas now I’ve exhausted all my (half) pleasantries: The casting.
What is going on here? The trouble is, the idea of having a central core cast play all the main characters over the course of the various time-zones in which it is set is a potentially interesting one.
It also smacks of desperation in what was a widely publicised, financially crippled production.
Equally, having all the actors transcend race or gender could work if there was any actual indication as to why this is important other than the vague notion of “generations”.
But like so much in the film, this idea is left completely undeveloped and unexplored.
It spends and hour and a half presenting the full spectrum of time zones and the cast’s various characters, but why? There’s no real reason why these people should re-appear in each story, there’s certainly no connection between them (other than a vague shooting star birthmark which each of the main characters possess, but again, there’s no real reason for this other than some half-baked attempt at a metaphor) and in some cases, ends up borderline offensive.
The narrative attempts to justify this by having it’s two central leads procreate lots of beautiful beige colored children at its conclusion, suggesting we will all eventually be one fairly dull looking race.
Throughout, racial stereotypes are thrown about with abandon, including Halle Berrie and Korean actress Doona Bar becoming white (and for the latter a toy dog owning Hispanic-American as well, just in case they felt left out of the horror), white actors becoming Korean and Scottish rugby fans violently attacking some English people after losing the Calcutta Cup, because obviously we all know this to be how all Scottish Rugby fans act.
It was in this scene (about 1 hour 45 minutes in) in which the film finally fell out of the bottom and into the void; so often it begins to explain itself and then gets bored and decides to violently kill or attack people because it can’t explain its horrendous stereotypes or lazy writing.
Even Tom Hanks gets in on the act with two appalling attempts at characters, one as an Edinburghian hotel owner and the other as an Irish, possibly Northern – it’s hard to tell, Gangster.
This scene is an early indication of the awfulness that is to come; the potentially amusing satire of a gangster’s memoirs not selling well because they were written by a thug fall apart at its seams when it challenges a pompous literary critic.
This scene is an appropriate microcosm of the entire film; an absolutely ridiculous premise of Hanks looking like a cartoon gangster; he approaches a fairly reprehensibly smug critic; said critic despite his attitude is probably correct in his assumptions, and rather than have said cartoon-gangster-Hanks actually have any sort of answer for his criticisms, proceeds to throw the critic over a top floor balcony, and he falls to a brutal and bloody death.
What’s more amazing is that this is supposed to be humorous, as gangster-Hanks received absolutely no reprimand (in fact, he’s rewarded for this act) as the police don’t seem to exist at any point in this film, despite the rather horribly awkward moment that it is.
The Wachowski’s have rather loudly dismissed critics for “not understanding this clear work of art” and one can’t help but think this easily scene is essentially a pre-emptive middle finger to said critics.
Honestly, this laughable three-hour snore-fest is enough of an insult.
This in fact opens the story of the most misjudged of the narratives in which Jim Broadbent leads as Timothy Cavendish.
Broadbent is a very good comedic actor, this much we all know, but his character becomes intensely repetitive in an incredibly pointless narrative that serves only as a poorly executed comedic relief.
This wouldn’t be quite so jarring in tone if any of this section, where Cavendish is sent to by his rich brother (Hugh Grant) as penitence for previously cheating on his wife (Ben Whishaw) while attempting to hide from aforementioned gangsters who threaten him for some reason (and joke about the lack of Police or authority figure in this world).
Then the old people break out of the home for some reason, then the scene in the pub with the cartoon Scots, and then he’s suddenly reconnected with a woman he hasn’t seen in years (Susan Serandon) and on and on it goes.
This film is so staggeringly dumb that it becomes increasingly difficult for one to criticise or even watch without stooping to its level, because why on earth any of this is in the film is beyond me.
The other two story lines I’m yet to really mention is because they’re both so dull.
The first is chronologically the oldest, which deals with colonialism and the slave trade, led by the largely forgettable Jim Sturgess (who apparently is in all six stories but I’d be damned if I even remember him in his main one) in which they sort of try to deal with institutional racism, but like everything else here, gets bored with itself and merely ends up bludgeoning an Asterix looking Tom Hanks with a treasure chest; something that even by that point I couldn’t enjoy – so warn down by the experience I was.
David Gyasi is impressive as slave stowaway Autua, but he’s not given much to do other than be racially abused by Tom Hanks and prove that he’s a sailor for a bit.
Meanwhile the other “plot” is set in Neo-Seoul (2144) which is largely the Wachowski’s trying to re-create The Matrix; starting with yet another interesting idea about lives being out of our control represented by the synthetic model waitresses of which Sonmi (Doona Bae) which just descends into the loudest and longest crashing and shooting and smashing section of the film, as she is saved by a “yellow faced” James D’Arcy.
This one is meant to be the most important, suggesting Sonmi is a prophet and a martyr for everything that happens in this film, but by the time this is revealed one is too depressed to even feel feelings anymore.
So there we have it, one of the most spectacular failures I’ve ever witnessed.
And yet, amazingly this is in fact a polarising film, some people somehow have given it very positive reviews despite how monumentally, insultingly stupid it is.
It is telling that the film was made my three (or two if you count the Wachowski’s as one) directors with separate crews, which is a good indication of what a mess this is.
It’s pretty difficult to be objective about, because there is such scant redeeming features about it that I can recall.
I can’t even give it the benefit of the doubt in saying it was beautifully shot or that the effects were mind-blowing or that the score was anything other than obtrusive, because it doesn’t even have that going for it.
In the end all I can wish for is that I had taken the hint when the screening got delayed by half an hour due to an out of date security key; someone, somewhere was trying to give me a sign.
Words: Adam Turner-Heffer
