Tag Archives: Cloud Atlas

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.