An ambitious and impressive adaptation of the complex Booker runner-up novel by David Mitchell that intertwines six stories across genres and time periods. More successful than other recent oeuvres with epic metaphysical sweep (e.g. Malick’s “The Tree of Life” or Aronofsky’s “The Fountain”): partly due to the Wachowski siblings’ sci fi action pedigree, it avoids getting bogged down. If anything it feels like Nolan’s “Inception”, including having so much plot to get through that there’s scant time to connect emotionally with all the characters. As in the book, I still don’t get the point of the second (1936) sequence; it doesn’t thematically link to the other stories, and as far as I can tell only exists to explain the title (the movie would likely have been improved by excising it). Instead, they cut the fun, satirical consumerist language of the 5th (2144) sequence, e.g. “putting on your nikes to get in your ford to go for a starbuck”. And if you found JGL’s makeup distracting in “Looper” you won’t be able to focus at all in most scenes … Otherwise, if film-making writ large appeals to you at all, Cloud Atlas is a highly worthwhile 3 hour event.
Monthly Archives: October 2012
Cloud Atlas (2012, dir. Lana & Andy Wachowski & Tom Tykwer): flawed, ambitious, impressive adaptation of David Mitchell’s Booker runner-up
Lost (2004-2010 TV series, by JJ Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber and Damon Lindelof) – a grand unified plot theory?
I know we’re 2 years behind, but we finally watched all 90-100 hours of LOST and I can now offer up this ‘grand unified theory’ to explain the 6-season story. (It’s high-concept modern myth-making; the only other recent show to have done this well is BSG.)
Synopsis: 2,000 years ago, Jacob unwittingly unleashes the Devil (‘Smokey’) upon the Island, which is the physical manifestation of Hell on earth. While Smokey seeks to escape the Island and wreak havoc upon the world, Jacob’s plan is to bring a series of ‘half-damned souls’ to the Island in the hope that they can redeem themselves and each other to somehow defeat Smokey. Even though Smokey finds a way to murder Jacob, his final set of ‘candidates’ – the survivors of Oceanic flight 815 – eventually discover their purpose and succeed at their task at great self-sacrificial cost, and are rewarded by reuniting as eternal friends in the after-life
WetWareGames 