Judicant

Cloud Atlas in Review

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:01:00 -0600

Where do I even begin with Cloud Atlas. I’ll start out by saying I am neither someone well acquainted with the world of film, nor the realm of literature; nor have I taken the time yet to read up on the views of well-known critics. With that in mind, I’ll attempt to sum up my thoughts on this latest addition to my audio-visual memory.

Also be forewarned, this examination will likely contain certain spoilers. If you wish to avoid this, and keep your first viewing pristine (though if you’re reading reviews with this in mind, I suggest you stop now), please, read no further.

So let’s get my judgement on the work out of the way first, since that’s what most people seem to want out of a review and I have no interest in keeping people waiting for it longer than is necessary: I liked Cloud Atlas, as such I plan to support it fiscally through my own purchasing power, and it’ll probably be something that remains fresh in my memory for a while yet.

Despite this though, I expect several people to dislike this film for it’s fragmented take on several small story lines, despite this being an essential literary element that supports the whole concept the story of Cloud Atlas weaves. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s exceedingly rare to find a scatter-plot of a storyline in films to be describable as anything more than ‘tolerable’, but in this instance it ultimately serves to remind the connection that all of the micro-plots have with one another, and it does so well.

While we’re on the subject, what of these micro-plots? How well do they add to the film, or does their brief nature lead them to be annoyingly simple and shallow? As with any collection of stories, they are not all equal, and some are better received than others (Salinger’s ‘Nine Stories’ comes to mind when I say that). The storylines of Neo Seoul and composing the Cloud Atlas Sextet where my personal favorites, though I attribute some of that to my own bias towards plots where the story doesn’t end with a typical happily-ever-after scenario. Both displayed more interconnectivity with the story than the other plots, for which Cloud Atlas made me a sucker for, and for me both showed more depth than the others: the first displaying some crude philosophy (which I fear I only appreciated because it mostly falls within my own views), and the second creating very strong emotional appeals.

The story with the Old Publisher, however, takes the prize for being the weakest, but still necessary, story of the film. Aside from breaking up the film with needed splashes of comedy (the obviously gender-bent role of Hugo Weaving providing it’s own self-sustaining humor), the story doesn’t really accomplish much in relation to the others in terms of depth. It does establish one of the narratives the film takes, which aided the superior plot in Neo Seoul, but aside from that it fails to assert it’s importance.

Despite this subjective failing, I did appreciate the subtlety taken with the recurring themes, symbols, and motifs throughout. The trailers I saw sent a worrying picture that the Cloud Atlas Sextet would be the main focus that bound all of these characters together, and I’m pleased to say this was not the case. The recurrence of most things was apparent enough to be noticed, but not drawn out to the point where it became a cringe-worthy gimmick. That said, I’m sure if someone where to list all of the recurring themes, I will probably have missed most of them.

I firmly believe that Cloud Atlas will be one of the best movies this year. Certainly not the highest grossing, I’ll wager, but looking at the objective ‘truth’ of the quality of the film (and as Sonmi says, there can only be one truth, “truth is singular”) it outshines all others released so far, and I doubt we’ll see any other dethrone it before December comes to a close.

Coming Soon!

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 19:25:48 -0500

weasyl:

It’s coming to the end of summer now, and we’re finally able to announce the official launch date of the Weasyl Beta!

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