|
 Arguably,
two of the most influential films of the end of the 20th
century were German director Tom Tykwer’s hyper-kinetic Run Lola Run,
and the science-fiction game-changer The Matrix by Americans Andy and
Larry - now Lana - Wachowski. Both films challenged notions of reality
and the ideas of self-determination versus fate by way of groundbreaking
special effects, cinematography, editing and truly original scripts.
These three filmmakers have combined their efforts for another
groundbreaking venture, Cloud Atlas, based on David Mitchell’s acclaimed
novel.
From
the South Seas in the mid-1800’s, to a post-apocalyptic, primitive land
of the future, Cloud Atlas makes stops in many eras, through the eyes of
many characters. Their connecting thread is a piece of symphonic music
written midway through these worlds, inspired by one person’s travels
and inspiring many others. All our characters are joined by the search
for love and the freedom to live their hearts’ desires. In our earliest
chapter, the impetus for our tale, Adam Ewing, is a 19th
century lawyer shipwrecked on a South Seas island, where be befriends
both a noted doctor and a runaway slave, who protects the young lawyer
when the doctor’s greed imperils Ewing’s life. It’s Ewing’s memoirs
from this time that give wing to an ambitious young musician’s great
work, the Cloud Atlas Sextet, generations later. Robert Frobisher uses
his experience working as an amanuensis for a famous composer to create
his opus until the elderly maestro proposes to steal the piece from the
younger, unestablished man. Frobisher’s lover from their 1930’s youth,
Rufus Sixsmith, is at the heart of a tale some forty years later, when,
as a nuclear physicist, he calls in journalist Luisa Rey to expose
wrongdoings at his company, subjecting them both to a deadly cat and
mouse game with the powers that be. In the early part of the 21st
century, publisher Timothy Cavendish has made a very bad deal with a
very bad man: His author has leapt to notoriety after forcing a
disapproving critic to take a flying leap out a window. The tough
demands royalties from the shifty Cavendish, who pleads with his
even-shiftier brother for help. Shifty Cavendish two then uses the
opportunity to imprison his ne’er-do-well sibling in a high-security old
folks’ home, wherein the trapped old man uses the time to reflect on his
life and its regrets while planning his escape. Not remotely dreaming
of freedom is the lovely Sonmi, a clone in Korea’s future capital of
Neo-Seoul, where replicating life is so commonplace that the average
fast food joint has any number of attractive, utterly subservient
manufactured people. It isn’t until one of her sister clones begins to
have desires of her own and dreams of freedom and respect that Sonmi
sees that she is a slave. With the help of a human rebel, she becomes
the figurehead for the public to understand the injustices both the
clones and the underprivileged are subjected to in this world of haves
and have-nots. In a time further away, the wilderness of Hawaii still
stands, mysterious and green for a group of primitives that live in
world of killed or be killed, eat or be eaten. The descent of a higher
being throws the simple life of Zachry and his tribe into more peril as
the cosmos traveler employs the fearful man to find an ancient
observatory high atop a dangerous mountain that will show her the way to
save her people.
For
all its elliptical storytelling and time-tripping construct, Cloud Atlas
is an empty affair. Affected and predictable once the novelty wears
off, which is practically immediately, at its most visceral, there’s not
one real “wow” moment in Cloud Atlas, which is the last thing one would
expect from its visually-minded filmmakers. Some of the film’s scenery
looks cribbed from other movies, such as Neo Seoul’s close resemblance
to Blade Runner’s 2019 Los Angeles and Luisa’s San Francisco car chase
draws an obvious parallel to the father of all San Francisco car chases,
Bullitt. In a jarring bit of self-homage, the Korean rebel meant to
save Sonmi breaks out some familiar Matrixian martial-arts moves. The
only surprises come at the end credits, when it’s revealed how very many
different characters the actors have actually played; some as different
sexes, some appearing merely as images in an old photo. When the most
memorable scene of your film is the cast listing, something’s gone
wrong. Other than that, there’s not one thing to remember after Cloud
Atlas’ punishing 163-minute running time is over. I take that back, the
patently awful Asian prosthetics glued onto the non-Asian cast is
memorable for all the wrong reasons. I think I shall have nightmares
about it and the discomfort of seeing Caucasians in waxy yellowface, no
matter how grandiose the concept, for some time. Somehow, understanding
the idea that the characters are souls that travel through time,
repeating their situations over and over and are therefore played by the
same actors, didn’t quite reason it away. One of the things that makes
Cloud Atlas unique is also one of its main problems in that with all
these overlapping stories; the audience gets only smatterings of the
hearts of the characters. Just when we get to know and identify with
one of them, it’s off to the past, present, future, or wherever the
filmmakers drag us, which is unfortunate because a few of them really do
stand out; like the story of callow, young Frobisher, the expressive,
haunting eyes of the clone Sonmi, and her brave sibling in slavery from
the past, Autua of the South Seas. I wouldn’t have asked this movie to
be any longer to accommodate more character development, though the
Carry-On-esque slapstick adventures of Cavendish and the Creole-Bonic
Nell-speak of the future primitives could easily have been chopped
down. The setup precludes us from caring about any of them and so much
of the emotion we’re clearly meant to feel by the story’s end is not
there. This is naught to do with its excellent cast, including a
brilliant Ben Whishaw as the caddish Frobisher, Hugo Weaving, back in
drag as a Nurse Rached to Jim Broadbent’s bumbling Cavendish, Jim
Sturgess under those cumbersome rubber prosthetics as the Neo Seoul
version of Neo, and the excellent Korean star, Bae Doo-na making her
American film debut. Cloud Atlas is a model of form over function that
never quite comes together.
Outside of its novel structure and audacious multifunctional casting
gimmick, which is how it feels by film’s end, there isn’t much to Cloud
Atlas but its threadbare, many-times-told tale of love and liberty, free
will versus fate. A moral that has already been spun by at least two of
its directors at least three times before with the Wachowski’s Matrix
series. While the pure ambition of telling a story in such bravura,
non-linear fashion is surely to be applauded, I’d have appreciated Cloud
Atlas more if it worked, or if I had merely even grown to care.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
October 26th, 2012
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