Cloudy with early fog

Rating: 4/10 (19 December 2013)

Three 'visionary' directors? Was that ever going to work? It sounds like a committee to me, and the result shows it.
I would have loved for this movie to have worked – there are good ideas in there – but it is over written, over CGI'd, overly complicated, and overly self-conscious. After more than two and a half hours, I couldn't wait for it to end, and it did about three times, but it just seemed to keep on going.
Early in the movie, Jim Broadbent as Timothy Cavendish, telegraphs the techniques used in the movie when he says, "my extensive experience as an editor has led me to a disdain for flashbacks and flashforwards, and all such tricksy gimmicks". This draws attention to the internal workings of the movie, which is indeed full of flashbacks, flashforwards, and many tricksy gimmicks. In my opinion, this breaks the fourth wall; when you ask your audience to buy into the pretence of movies, exposing the pretence undermines the contract of involvement with the viewer – it was a warning sign for me.
The film features a number of stories from the past, present and future. The scenarios range from a 19th century sea voyage, a futuristic, post apocalyptic society living in Hawaii, and the story of a Korean android who rebels against her masters.
Other episodes range in tone from broad, not particularly funny comedy to intense drama, all showing how the actions of individual lives impact one another across time. This is hammered home with sledgehammer subtlety, mainly through narration – the film needed narration otherwise it would have been totally incoherent.
Tom Hanks and Halle Berry feature in a number of scenarios. Hanks' strength is in his dependable, everyman persona, although these qualities are evident in some scenes, in others his performance seems more like a caricature. Halle Berry brings her magnetic screen presence to her roles, but she is asked to do some ridiculous things.
Most challenging for me are the sequences featuring Doona Bae as Sonmi-451, the South Korean android. These are interminable and often end in gun battles seemingly inspired by the mindless repetition of video games. We now have a generation of directors that have grown up in the video game era; unfortunately, this has begun to inform some of their work.
"Cloud Atlas" probably would have worked better with some tougher decision-making and judicious editing. "Mr Nobody", made in 2009, covers similar territory. The difference is that "Mr Nobody" is the work of one visionary director, Jaco Van Dormael, and is an intriguing film full of charm, subtlety and a genuine sense of mystery. "Mr Nobody" is a masterpiece while "Cloud Atlas" is a mess.
One oppressive thought is that one day there will be a director's cut of "Cloud Atlas" that will even be longer – that's if they actually cut anything out the first time around. Although some sequences work better than others, I am not a fan of "Cloud Atlas". For this film to be rated too highly would lower the standard of what I think a great film should be.