An ambitious novel generally well realised on the screen

Rating: Null/10 (4 April 2014)

The 2004 novel by British writer David Mitchell was a hugely ambitious work which I enjoyed and admired. It is six stories with subtle inter-relationships between them: each one written in a different format, each constituting a different genre, each set in a different time. This was always going to be a formidably challenging piece of clever writing to bring to the big screen in a manner accessible to the viewer but true to the spirit of the original work. The film was written, produced and directed by the Americans Lana (formerly Larry) and Andy Wachowski and the German Tom Tykwer and, against all the odds, it works very well.
The first challenge was finding the money to make a movie which is so demanding of its viewers. During the four years of development, the project met difficulties securing financial support and it was eventually produced with a $102 million budget provided by independent sources, which makes it one of the most expensive independent films of all time. The risk paid off since the takings more than covered the costs, but critical and audience reaction has been variable. The next challenge was how to structure the work. The novel consists of 11 sections with only the sixth story in unified form and the other five split in two, set symmetrically around the core, so that the reader finishes with the second section of the story with which he started. The film adopts a totally different structure; the pre-title sequence immediately introduces the lead characters of the six tales and then the film itself constantly jumps between the different narratives. At first, this is really confusing for the viewer, but gradually one gets a mental grip on the inter-locking stories. One advantage of this approach is that all six tales come to a climax towards the end of the movie.
Another challenge was how to realise the many connections that the author created between the different stories. Some were easy, such as the reoccurring comet-shaped birthmark and the use of the word six as in the character Sixsmith and the musical octet. In fact, the inter-connections are done more obviously in the film than in the book. The main device for achieving this is to have the same actors playing multiple roles, although it is often not easy to pick this out since the make-up is very professional. The eight leading actors play no less than 46 roles between them. Tom Hanks is especially impressive in his six roles, but other stars are Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant and Susan Sarandon. Another device for making cross connections is clever cutting between similar scenes or situations.
The final challenge was how to do all this in a manageable length. The novel is over 500 pages and the film comes in at little under three hours. To require so much concentration for so long is a big ask and not all movie-goers will have the stamina or inclination. But I found it a genuinely bold and original work that I enjoyed and will want to revisit before too long to savour the full richness of this unusually complex but thoughtful work.