Breathtaking. Perfect

Rating: 10/10 (13 April 2013)

Wow..
When i first saw cloud atlas, i had no idea what to expect, and boy was i blown away. This movie was love at first sight.
The Wachowskis has really overdone themselves with this masterfully conversion of David Mitchells novel: Cloud Atlas.
Like the book, the film follows six sets of characters in six different time-lines, and six different locations. All of the stories happened independently of each other, yet they are still revealed to be connected, and sometimes in the most surprising ways.
Not only are there six different stories, but the movie itself feels like six different genres. One is aboard 19th century galley, one is a 1930s love affair, one i a 1970s thriller, one is a modern comedy, one is a gritty depressing sci-fi action, and the last is a post-apocalyptic adventure flick. And it works! The actors are all recycled throughout each of the different stories and this is where it becomes brilliant. For the movie itself has two main themes: first, everything is connected, and second, karma and reincarnation!
And it truly is brilliant! Actors change from male to female, white to black, American to Korean, all in the blink of an eye. With excellent prosthetics, some of the actors are hardly recognizable, whilst other are deliberately familiar, so that the audience can connect with the other characters. Some have complained that when Jim Sturgess changes takes on a yellow-face to play a Korean is racist, but when the movie shows you his other characters connection with actress Doona Bae's characters, the argument face-plants. The use of the same actors over this broader scope of race and genders is deliberate!
The movie plays out slow in the beginning, taking it's time to patiently explain each of the different set pieces, before the pattern reveals itself, and when it does, it's spectacular. Together with perfect performance from all the actors and actresses, combined with an excellent score from also co-director Tom Tykwer, this one hit all the right spots. I had to fight the tears towards the end in this one, and not from joy or sorrow, but from simply comprehending the artistically masterpiece that is Cloud Atlas.
This is a movie i could go on about forever. It's visually beautiful, masterfully directed, perfectly acted and simply mind boggling good in story elements. For me this is easily the best movie of 2012, and perhaps even the best movie i've ever seen to date.