A delightful visual retelling of a kick-ass novel

Rating: 10/10 (15 November 2012)

It's delightful watching the visual story of David Mitchell's novel "Cloud Atlas." While the screen cannot capture all of Mitchell's beautifully worded phrases, interesting word selections, and piercing observations; the film is an enjoyable rendition of a complex novel.
Mitchell creates an ascending and descending ladder of stories that travel though time from the 19th century to far future. It's six stories in one, each with a distinctive style and voice. The stories are successively more engaging coming to a head with "Sloosha's Crossin' An Ev'rythin' After," a delightful, fearless romp of language and sound.
The movie offers a satisfying treatment of "The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish," a darkly humorous tale, with Jim Broadbent well-cast as Timothy. It falls flat, however, on its portrayal of "An Orison of Sonmi." Mitchell's futuristic world takes digs at consumer culture, corporate entitlement, and the treatment of a labor class. On screen, it looks a lot like Blade Runner and devolves into stereotypical sf and tiresome running and shooting. Doona Bae is perfectly Sonmi-451, however.
The novel addresses slavery, exploitation, classism, status, societal structure, and utopian theory and offers the reader lots of room to interpret and explore. The movie distills all this down into a repeated theme, "from womb to tomb we are all connected." It's pat, but retains beauty.
The movie well-displays the interconnections between the characters, their various incarnations, and the karmic outcomes of their actions — good and evil. The film technique of fading in and out on visually similar themes works perfectly for this. It's particularly pleasing to watch with the novel fresh in mind. The movie also uses quite a few lines directly from the novel. Quite satisfying.
The choice to cast the same actors in multiple roles is interesting and certainly appropriate to the theme and style of the story, but it's also weirdly distracting. Tom Hanks is most enjoyable as the outraged author of "Knuckle Sandwich," Dermot Hoggins, but seems a little older than the novel's Zachry, while Hugo Weaving is delightfully villainous in any costume.
For a great double-feature: Watch and read Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" (2010).