FilmBah Watches: Cloud Atlas

When the first trailer for Cloud Atlas was released, it was touted as one of the biggest mindfuckery of images and scenes ever put together that still doesn't quite explain the movie, despite being one of the longest trailers running at more than 6 minutes. After watching the trailer, it was hard not to agree and it was even harder not to be excited that the bottled lightning of the Wachowski siblings, since their mind-blowing CG rainbow The Matrix, could be prepared to strike twice.

Although Cloud Atlas was released a month earlier than Life of Pi, it was the latter adaptation that eventually made it to Malaysian screens first. Why I mention this is because both of these were adapted from supposedly 'unfilmable' books. Having a poor reading habit of books that tend to be made into blockbusters (because I'm just too busy with films), I don't truly know what made these books 'unfilmable', but I would presume it was partly because they had something so profound to say, that was difficult to convey and translate it to film language. In the hands of Ang Lee, Life of Pi was probably successful of doing that to some extent, so it was to be seen whether the Wachowski siblings and their third co-director Tom Tykwer were up to the task.

A task that is more ambitious than what is achieved.

Damn if I knew why this scene was cut by the Censorship Board

Cloud Atlas is mishmash of six separate stories, told intermittently between flashbacks and flash-forwards, than span from as early as the time of slavery in the 18th century to as far as a post-apocalyptic future, where the actions of a few central characters in their respective time periods have a cause-effect relation to the events in their futures. A young and uprising lawyer leaving for home from the New World as he comes to terms with slavery; a gay musician who is determined to compose his greatest work with the greatest composer of his time as he corresponds with his lover in London; a journalist who uncovers a hidden danger of a nuclear reactor in the 70s; an elderly publisher conned into being a resident of an elderly home in the 21st century; a genetic clone breaking free from commercial servitude and promised with false freedom in the futuristic city of Neo Seoul; and a fearful villager who is haunted by demons and threatened by cannibalistic raiders, helps an outsider to find hope to build a new home in a devastated planet after a major apocalyptic event.

There is a great mix of the science and the spiritual here, as some universal laws such as karma and reincarnation are at work here, as these character meet with situations to test their moral dilemmas against the all too human evils that are repeated throughout the various time periods.

Technically, this movie is a marvel. Aside from the top notch CG backgrounds and productionssets, the use of prosthesis, make-up, and undoubtedly copious amounts of CG, to put the main cast into several shells is a remarkable feat in itself. It allowed the ensemble cast to showcase their range. Despite the misses when you could tell the same actor playing as the menacing assassin in one time period is the same actor playing the bullying nurse in another, the added guessing game was fun until the final reveal is pulled on who played who in the six interrelated stories.

But the greatest technical feat performed in this movie is the editing. Cloud Atlas is not only a class act of how cause and effect works in narrative structure, but takes it to another level with masterful editing of jumping between the time periods in a linear stretch, maintaining a consistent pace across all six interwoven tales, while hitting the high and lows of emotions as you would from a single linear story. Sure, it was confusing at first but this is Pulp Fiction and Memento on a larger scale. This should be Alexander Berner's most prolific work to date of well-planned editing and how he could weave such a complex web of intricate stories almost so effortlessly.

Though I'll never know what made them decide to do that thing with the eyes.

But underlying all that technical brilliance, not much can be said of its supposed spiritual content. The substance of this movie doesn't transcend above its grand style, due to a weak connection between the timelines, that are joined more out of convenience than in-depth correlation. Yes, there are plenty of references among the timelines to each other, but that doesn't work as much as referencing a great movie to make yours great. It was difficult for me at times to grasp how the event in one past could have any major impact in the future. At best it barely bridges the effect of one past to be the cause of a future. At worst, it was convoluted and makes you believe in coincidences more, rather than some universal force at work.

The decision by the directors to have the characters belong to a single strain, rather than random strangers brought together by fate, diminishes their development to be more than just shadows of their past or future selves, which turns them into an awful lot of buffer for the profound message that our actions is infectious to others to be delivered; a message that only gets sent by the very end in a tired scene only because we've heard the same hammering throughout the 3 hour long journey. Time and focus were spent too much on getting the technicalities right, that it had hollowed out its deeper potential to be thought-provoking, once you see past the surface connections. It does sound a little ironic to say that its focus on the science of movie making, killed its spirituality. 

Personally, just like with Life of Pi, Cloud Atlas is more of a technical exercise for filmmakers to show that they now have the technology and techniques to accept the challenge of more 'unfilmmable' books, but the finesse and interpretation of these source materials to send home its emotional impact is not found here. Nevertheless, I'd imagine Cloud Atlas to be one that gets better from repeated viewings, so at least this means that it would age well in any collection.