Caught Between Two Worlds

Rating: 5/10 (10 November 2013)

Characters in 6 different eras struggle and define themselves, decisions and acts of kindness (or evil) rippling through time and influencing other lives. In the 19th century, a young slaver is helped by a stow-away; in the early 20th century, a conflicted young composer works as an apprentice for a forgotten genius; in the 70s, a reporter investigates corporate wrong-doings; in the present day, a debt-ridden publisher goes through a number of absurd ordeals; in the 22nd century in Neo-Seoul, a clone waitress discovers the hidden power she possesses; in a distant, post-Apocalyptic Hawai, two survivors from different cultures try to activate a beacon that might allow them to escape a poisoned Earth.
Long summary for a complex story. I will not look at this in the context of the source novel, since I never read source novel. But since against all odds this was turned into a film - and the ordeal endured to get it made is worthy of a book itself - how does this film work on its own merits?
Tom Tykwer (Run, Lola Run & Perfume) co-directed this huge independent venture with the Wachowsky siblings (Matrix, Speed racer, V for Vendetta), and at first it is very encouraging to have such strong cinematic voices expressed through such a project. Directing duties were split depending on story segments in a way that meant the more contemporary ones were handled by Tykwer. A much more interesting, unusual and ultimately controversial decision was made to have actors recur across segments, playing various characters who differed in their gender and race. More about this later.
Cloud Atlas has been praised as a masterpiece and derided as a massive folly. Whatever it is, and in my opinion it is torn between the two, sometimes within the space even of an individual segment, it certainly is unique. In fact, when commenting on films you can often single out things that worked throughout and others that didn't... With Cloud Atlas you have a less clean-cut job on your hands.
For all the vaunted technical prowess and vision of its makers, Cloud Atlas has trouble keeping a balance, something it often just barely makes up for in pacing. For a 3-hour film containing 6 smaller stories and a framing device, it actually flies by. But then, on the flip- side, you often feel that we cut to another thread just as the one we were following was getting interesting. This ambiguity stretches to nearly all departments, even casting.
What largely saves the film and will keep you in your seat is the ever-dependable emotional anchor that is Tom Hanks. Whatever the era, he is hugely watchable, and provides much of the humanity of the film. The same can be said for Jim Broadbent, alternating between heart- breaking coward, indifferent officer and evil old bastard depending on the sub-story. Elsewhere things get more complicated: Ben Whishaw and James D'Arcy have trouble shouldering the weight that the script piles up on them, Doona Bae is undermined by the film's most controversial artistic choice, and Halle Berry is simply terrible across the board.
And for all its merits - Hanks, Broadbent, visions of different periods, the light interweaving of stories - there are two decisions that come very close to making the whole thing ridiculous: to a lesser extent, the silly future-speak from the post-apocalyptic story repeatedly makes you laugh when it shouldn't, and doesn't make sense in the broader sense of the film: why then do people use modern vernacular in the 18th, 19th and 22nd centuries but not here? The real disaster on hand, though, is the gender and racial-bending casting.
Effects makeup have come a long way in 130 years of cinematic history, especially when it comes to portraying the otherworldly, but we still haven't nailed many more natural things: aging makeup is still hit-and-miss (think of "J. Edgar"...), so changing genders and races without finding yourself in the darkest corners of uncanny valley should be quite a challenge. Here it fails miserably: the pasty, waxworks-looking futuristic Asians played by Caucasian actors are unsettling enough, but undermining poor Doona Bae's performance by trying to pass her off as Caucasian on two counts really hurts. The many faces of Tom Hanks are a bit more playful, but things become downright ridiculous when 60 years are piled on D'Arcy and Hugo Weaving plays an old nurse, and manages to be less convincing as a woman than he was in drag-comedy Priscilla. It's an impossible-to-overcome distraction in what could have been a great film, and keeps you at arm's length from an often compelling story.
In the end, I do recommend seeing this. For all its short-comings, it is never less than interesting, and even its failed experiments deserve to be experienced once. It's unlikely you'll see its like on this kind of budget anytime soon.