It's grand, funny, deep, and ambitious. But it's also weirdly flat, the meanings thin and obvious.

Rating: 7/10 (5 November 2012)

Cloud Atlas (2012)
It's no secret this is an ambitious film, over two hours long with three directors and scenes set in six distinct time frames over several centuries. It's also widely known that the main actors, a half dozen in all but famously Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, and Hugh Grant, each take on roles in the six different periods, with outrageously effective makeup that amount to disguises, at least from the viewer's perspective.
What remains to be seen is how any one person will respond to the film. Me? I watched it all with interest and found parts, or aspects, fascinating. But I was never really swept away, rarely did I care overly for the various protagonists, and never did the philosophical message mean beans to me. It's dumbed down a bit, a little like "The Matrix" which has such ambitious meaning to go along with all the technical feats.
The grand themes, which will take a good hour to have any inkling of, center around being noble and good in a world where much or most of society is against you. That's appealing--the main characters are fighting evil in the good old Hollywood sense. As you see the rise of one of these characters into a semi-god like figure (she is worshipped in the futuristic sections), you are expected to follow and appreciate the clap-trap pseudo-religious cant that comes from this woman's mouth. I liked her, don't get me wrong, but the writing is a bit childish.
What hurts the film even more is the thing that's supposed to make it so amazing and fresh--its construction in many pieces. To be clear, this isn't a set of six movies, one after another. No, we shift time zones often, sometimes in a matter of moments, often to great confusion at first. As you watch you learn how to watch, which is good, and you recognize better the different situations. But as vigorous and enlivening as this is (you really have to stay alert) it isn't really always for effect. I mean, there are reasons often for why we shift from one time zone to another, but not always in a satisfying way, It's more like the director(s) are trying to keep the audience from getting lost.
You might also get a little tired of the clichés that are used in each of the situations, but in fact each individual story has its interest. Some of the scenes are downright comical, practically slapstick. Others are horrifying, ranging from a personal drama and tragedy in the mid-1900s between two composers, one of them gay, to a future-based band of primitives who are being wiped out by violent huntsmen with colorful face-paint. You can see how there are clichés in the wings, ready to flourish with the right viewers.
The theater I saw this in (with digital, not film, projection) made it all look very good, if a bit sterile and "perfect." There were twenty people there and none of them left halfway. It's not a movie you necessarily abandon once you plunked down your tenner. But it will put some viewers off.
What saves it is significant. The acting is exaggerated and fun, and sometimes quite breathtaking in its deception. And the whole filming experience is so wide-ranging and ambitious you can't help but be impressed by all the work, and all the ideas at work. See it? If you liked "Melancholia" or "2001" or "Tree of Life" or other films of that sort, that look fabulous and deal with deep issues, you might really enjoy this. But don't expect your life to be changed. It's too trapped by its big intentions to ever wrestle free and be a true work of art.
And besides, it's been decades since a good movie has been made by committee.