Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas is quite simply one of the best films I've ever seen in my entire life. But then again this is not something I would call just a film.... read more

Cloud Atlas is quite simply one of the best films I've ever seen in my entire life. But then again this is not something I would call just a film. It is unlike anything I've ever seen before. Its narrative isn't traditional in any sense of the word; it flows like clouds around a globe. They thunder, they pour, they disappear to reveal a clear blue sky. It takes not just cinematic technique further, but storytelling further. This is a cinematic masterpiece that deserves to be a product of the 21^st century.

It is at once cerebral, emotional and spiritual. While it makes you think and feel, it also elevates your consciousness. I could feel my mind expanding. Finally, a film which respects the cognitive capacity each human brain is gifted with. It tells 6 stories spanning across ages but it is actually one story. I wasn't getting a lot of what was going on but at the same time I was. I was getting all of it. You just need to let yourself go.

This genre-defying motion picture has everything I could ask for in a movie, probably more. It is based on the novel by David Mitchell which I'm sure I will read once I obsessively watch the film a few more times. There are several themes that run along the narrative, from slavery to art to love to truth. I can imagine why someone would find this film confusing or get bored but that is just because we aren't accustomed to watching films like these. I for one was sweepingly entertained from start to finish. It is long, yes, but then again I like my films long especially when they are this good.

There were several set pieces that made me tear up in awe of the beauty or hold my breath in fear or just smile out of sheer contentment. My favorite is the one, which comes smack in the middle of the film, when the Cloud Atlas sextet is composed and the car and the plane reach their own crescendos. It also helps when the music is as beautiful as what Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil concoct. I found myself humming the theme on my way out.

Christopher Nolan is known for making big budget cerebral films. He owes his career to Stanley Kubrick, a visionary who made big budget art films. Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski use all of their cinematic powers to create a work of art, which is so grand in scope and experimental in ideas that the screen feels small in front of them. It is no coincidence that Warner Brothers invested in all of these projects.

I could name several films like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Tree of Life (2011), Solaris (1972) and The Fountain (2006) but that would give you the wrong idea. Furthermore, it would make you believe I'm comparing it to these masterpieces when I'm only adding this film to a prestigious club.

In times like these when 3D is being used to make cinema seem technologically innovative, here is a film equally audacious and ambitious, probably more. It's not just visually progressive but narratively and intellectually as well. Best part is it doesn't need a gimmick to do so. Probably it does and that gimmick lies in the casting of the same actors in all the stories. Take a look at this cast: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, Susan Sarandon, Hugo Weaving, James D'Arcy and Doona Bae. It probably also lies in the editing, the match cuts which link the stories with spatial action. These are hardly gimmicks for me, to be honest.

Let your mind go, stop trying to think of the meaning behind each scene and you'll actually understand the film. Do this at least on the first viewing. Feel the movie, like you would feel a great piece of music and you will have an experience that is beautiful, that is transcendental. An experience that is true true.

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Cloud Atlantis is a movie that requires you to pay a lot of attention to figure out what is happening. The confusion is compounded by the fact tha... read more

Cloud Atlantis is a movie that requires you to pay a lot of attention to figure out what is happening. The confusion is compounded by the fact that the five different stories are set in five different eras ranging from post apocalyptic to the future. So suddenly you find yourself in a barren world and then are transported to a futuristic world. In between you visit the 1960s, an America with slaves and two different times in the UK. The only thing common is some kind of comet shaped birthmark that the characters in different eras sport.

Is there some significance to this birthmark? No, so don't break your heads looking for any. Are the stories linked? No they are not. What joins the stories is their underlying theme. Which is about how the actions of one person in one era can impact another in another era. It is also about finding love and believing in its power to save you and to change the world.

As the movie progresses you start getting into each story, so that by the end you are quite absorbed in the lives of the characters.

Would I recommend this movie to you? Well, I must warn you that it will take some time for you to begin understanding the different threads. I have already told you they are not linked so you can just concentrate on each story and enjoy the nuances of the emotions therein. Once you get into each story, Cloud Atlas can be quite a rewarding experience, especially if you like movies with multiple story lines and period dramas. I just wish they would subtitle the English movies too. The accents sometimes are so hard to follow that you end up missing major chunks of the story line.

p.s. on a different note, the ad against smoking which shows how much tar a smokers lung collects was quite good. I am sure, it's going to get some smokers somewhere to reconsider. A good added short to the movie!

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Cloud Atlas is such ambitious film making that it is difficult to review it after the first viewing. Our minds are very rarely challenged at the mo... read more

Cloud Atlas is such ambitious film making that it is difficult to review it after the first viewing. Our minds are very rarely challenged at the movies. Most of the times we are asked to leave our brains at home.

This film attempts at simplifying a very complicated story which is broken down into six stories cutting across time and space, past, present and future but actually is one giant of a story.

I would have never read the book it is based nor would have had the patience to make sense of it even if had read it so thanks to the Wachowskis's and Tom Tykwer for being the brave filmmakers to attempt a film which was termed difficult to translate on the big screen.

With the help of a bunch of actors playing multiple roles and the use of editing to fluidly and seamlessly merge words and visuals the filmmakers take your hand and make you walk this path giving you the best time at the movies you've had in a long time.

With my mind constantly trying to make sense of what was happening the film failed to make an emotional connect but the masterstroke in filmmaking was that after the film was over I could remember and recollect all the six stories.

Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime & every kindness we birth our future" this line summed up the theme of the film for me and I hope it does the same for you.

Word of mouth - Cloud Atlas is like eating a soul satisfying Indian thali. Sab kuch milega isme.

Rating - **** (very good)

Ticket meter - worth a visit to the theatre.

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The Matrix brothers, Wachowskis' Cloud Atlas is audacious ambition on screen that aims to make the “unfilmable” possible. Spanning centuries, t... read more

The Matrix brothers, Wachowskis' Cloud Atlas is audacious ambition on screen that aims to make the “unfilmable” possible. Spanning centuries, telling six separate stories with a dozen actors each playing multiple roles in each story, Cloud Atlas is exhilarating cinema despite it not working as a whole.

The diary of a 19^th century lawyer travelling the South Paciic is read in the 1930's by a composer in a book that doesn't have the last few pages. The composer writes about the book to his lover in letters that the latter preserves only to be found by a journalist who he contacts to help share secrets of a nuclear power plant. The journalists tryst with the power plants secrets get written into a pulp fiction novel which is later read by a publisher in present day 2012 as he escapes from an old age home. Parallel to these run two other stories, one set in not so distant future where a”fabricant” is persued to ignite a revolution against Unanimity corp. and a post apocalyptic world where this “fabricant” is worshipped as god and a set of humans speaking a weird language are trying to send out signals to outer space for help to survive.

David Mitchell's novel of the same name written in 2004 was critically acclaimed and considered widely unfilmable, owing to its vast canvas. Cloud Atlas, based on the book, is equally vast if not more, with shifting eras and themes of rebellion, trust, karma, cyclical life and love being a constant undercurrent. The narrative is diced into small fragments from each story, something that confuses no end. It takes about half an hour of commanded concentration and thinking to be able to enter the world the movie creates, but once that is done, it is a wonderful awe inspiring journey where the thrills and plot twists are less yet one is waiting to find out why and how the stories end.

Each of the stories, per se are immensely flimsy and thin. The makers make up for this with some brilliant settings and devices like having the same set of actors don roles in each era and story with some huge prosthetic help. Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant, Halle Berry particularly give their roles definition and finesse adding texture to an otherwise flat storyline. Six Tales are told in about three hours and the time begins to tell half way through as the stories start making sense and patience wears thin at times. The makers add in a few recurring motifs like the comet shaped birth mark that run across the stories and there is some beautiful philosophy peeping through not so heavy dialogues giving the story its political and moral fulcrum.

What one wishes though is that there was more meat to the story , that the spectacle of sheer scale and courage of ambition that the film displays were backed with some finer and crisper story telling as well, something that The Matrix achieved to brilliant result. Cloud Atlas is labored in parts, exciting in for most of it yet saps the energy out of you owing to the vastness of it all. Watch it though, cause it is rare to find such originality and imagination on screen these days.

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Cloud Atlas is a stunning hexaptych, a clandestine composite film. By hexaptych, I try to brand that cloud atlas is a classic renaissance painting... read more

Cloud Atlas is a stunning hexaptych, a clandestine composite film. By hexaptych, I try to brand that cloud atlas is a classic renaissance painting filled with six panels or sections painted in a beautiful canvas (a silver-screen here), depicting an anthology of six different stories- that are interconnected and entwined in multiple themes and highly sedative theories of life, love, birth, death, existentialism, spirituality, reincarnation, modernism, past life etc.... If the thematic essence of cloud atlas must be realized, understood and dwelled upon, one must be familiar having watched lots of films that deal with multi-layered screenplay, hyperlink cinema. If you are a voracious reader, and came across nested stories and interwoven narratives - thereby intriguing lot of fantasy elements in it, that definitely helps in understanding cloud atlas. Continue your reading from the below link...

http://kanna89.blogspot.in/2012/11/cloud-atlas-two-face-review.html

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