An astonishingly successful adaptation

Rating: 8/10 (1 September 2013)

I have to admit I was a bit skeptical. I'm a big fan of the novel this was based on, but I also would have rated it -- as a whole work -- one of the most unfilmable books I've ever read.
And yet they pulled it off, with surprisingly little condensation of the set of stories that form the whole. To those not familiar with the novel, Cloud Atlas tells a set of stories stretching from a 19th century Polynesian voyage to a distant post-apocalyptic future Hawaii, with stops along the way in the Thirties, the Seventies, the present day and a dystopian future "Corpocratic" Korea with overtones of Brave New World and Soylent Green. Each of the stories is based on a period document and is linked to the others by the appearance (somehow) of the previous document in the sequence in the current one, and also by the apparent reincarnations of at least one character.
The novel is structured in onion layers, moving forward in time and then backward. The movie, wisely, takes a more complicated approach, introducing each of the tales in a brief vignette and then moving forward and backward through them by thematic connections. It's quite brilliantly done and surprisingly easy to follow -- although viewers who were less familiar with the source material might perhaps have found it confusing in spots.
Moreover, it's nice to see that the emotional heft of the stories (the poignant tragedy of Robert Frobisher, the spunky amateur sleuthing of Luisa Rey, the broad comedy of Timothy Cavendish, the haunted future world of Zachry and Ol' Georgie with its overtones of the classic Riddley Walker) has been retained. I was worried that the overall effect might be to diffuse that kind of impact, but partly owed to fine visuals and partly to strong performances, that didn't happen.
And the performances are very strong: Tom Hanks shows off a quite diverse range -- making it easy to forget that his Henry Goose and Zachry, for example, are products of the same actor. Halle Berry's roles are less demanding, but she shows stronger acting chops than she's usually given credit for. Other members of the cast, woven through each story by the reincarnation theme, deliver solid to brilliant work as well, including Hugh Grant and Hugo Weaving in some expected roles and some... rather unexpected ones.
A special word needs to be said about the makeup, which was extensive as befits an attempt to transport an entire cast through multiple human lifetimes. It was so flawlessly done for the most part -- I didn't detect Halle Berry under the makeup for Jocasta Ayrs until I saw the credits -- that when it was distracting I have to assume the effect was intended. Sometimes the intention is clearly comic: we're meant, I think, to see Nurse Noakes precisely as Hugo Weaving in heavy drag as befits the comic tone of the Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. Likewise, where the makeup is weird and off-putting -- as in story of Sonmi with all the fake epicanthic folds and lumpy foreheads in view -- I have to assume the effect was intentional, although I'm less sure what the intention was. In any case, it's a prominent part of the film and something viewers should be prepared for.
The only other minor flaw was that in the final piece in Zachry's post-apocalyptic future, the degraded pidgin-like English the characters speak sounds awfully stilted coming out of the actors' mouths. It's not a bad distraction, though, just a slight blemish on what's otherwise an excellent film.