Beautiful, Funny, Moving, Thought Provoking, Flawed

Rating: 10/10 (26 October 2012)

Saw a midnight showing of this film and was up all night thinking about it. Now, almost 12 hours later, I am finally forming some thoughts about it and I have to say: the majority are positive, and the whole of me really thinks everybody should see this movie, if only because it will give you so much to think about.
From a review perspective, there is a lot that is good: the visuals, the pacing, the bulk of the script. As a fan of the book, was there stuff I missed? Characters, episodes, conversations- sure. But I get that it had to be cut down and re-shaped to make it work as a film, and I think it does work. In some ways it is even more powerful, helping to bring home a lot of the inter-connected elements of the novel's nesting stories with an extra dramatic punch that only something like film can really provide. If there are occasional mis-steps, they are in moments when it gets a little too heavy handed and for me this is really confined to the ending- the final moments of both Zachry's and Adam's stories feel just a bit too layered on, almost as if the film makers were afraid we wouldn't get it. Ironic, since the film demands so much from its audience (it's in no way a passive movie experience) up to that point, and maybe the intention was to, in some ways, ease the audience out of the three hours of wildly engaging cinema they had been subjected to.
The performances run the gamut from decent (Tom Hanks) to solid (Halle Berry) to good (Keith David, James D'arcy) to inspired (Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon, Jim Sturgess)to the brilliant (Ben Whishaw, Jim Broadbent, Doona Bae). Is the make-up occasionally distracting? Yes, but often it's supposed to be, with the men of New Seoul, for instance, looking utterly strange and phony next to the all-too-human female fabricants, and the ridiculous 70's haircuts slyly reminding you that Luisa Reyes' story is told through the eyes of a precocious young novelist. Sometimes the make-up is startlingly good- Broadbent, for instance, is completely unrecognizable as the 19th century ship captain, and Xun Zhou disappears into her role as Tom Hank's sister in the far far future. Like every other aspect of this movie, it's one more piece of a puzzle that is by turns utterly sincere and completely tongue-in-cheek.
And in the end, that's what allows this movie to transcend some its flaws: for every mis-step, there is a bullseye, and it leaves you wondering if even some of the "mistakes" or "oversights" are part of the equation, intentionally done to make you think harder about what you just saw. Some of the stories feel dense and rich, some feel shallow and pulpy- but all of them are compelling and watchable and leave you wanting more. The over-all impression is one of a myriad of complex and diverse indivdiuals, who in their brief moments all contribute to a larger impression of humanity as a whole, of life as an experience, of the universe and history composed of many tiny points of light, each intrinsically valuable, but only truly catching your eye for a moment, usually as one falls to its death, or breaks from its fixed place to wander. The statement is deeply compelling, but what is more remarkable is how each element of the movie structurally upholds that core statement, as no one person or tale is allowed to upstage another (though of course, some elements will call stronger to some viewers), but the piece as a whole could not be as effective without each of them.
It's a remarkably ambitious work of art, in both what it is trying to say and how it is trying to say it, and it's not for everybody. That, for me, makes me like it even more: it seems rare that such a big budget, star spangled film should take so many risks, and be so uncompromising. In light of that, I think it's something people should see, even if they hate it. Liking a work of art is less important than if we're stimulated by it, and I can't imagine anyone seeing this film and not having something to talk about afterwards.