Ambitious And Incredible

Rating: 9/10 (6 January 2015)

Cloud Atlas is one of the most ambitious films I have ever seen. 30 minutes into the almost 3 hour film, I began to think that perhaps it was too bloated and all over the place to actually achieve what it set out to do, but a few minutes after that 30 minute mark the film started to prove itself to me, up until the very end when I had been completely won over.
Cloud Atlas is not one story, but 6 stories. What's even more interesting is that almost every actor in this film plays a different character in each storyline. Sometimes you don't even recognize them because of mass amounts of makeup and prosthetics, or sometimes they will play a tiny role in one storyline but a main role in another one. The story lines do not occur one after the other like an anthology film, but simultaneously. We bounce back and forth between them because they are all interconnected in a way. Why? Because the main themes of the film involve past lives and karma. It also looks at other themes, such as love. It's jam packed, even for a 3 hour film, but it most certainly pulls it all off.
I would say that I enjoyed every actors performance. Sure, some are a little cheesy at times, but a lot of that is actually played off as comedy. Tom Hanks is great. Jim Sturgess is wonderful. Halle Berry is terrific. As I said, everyone is great. There's also a lot of unique style to each individual story. Some are more action packed and dazzling in their visuals, such as the Neo Seoul story, where as some are more simply beautiful and touching, such as the story of two gay lovers separated in 1936, which is a story that touched me and I would have loved to have seen as a full length film. In fact, all of these stories could have worked on their own, but in a way they work even better all in one story. When you see just how one story connected with the other, it's really satisfying and often emotional.
I would highly recommend this. It's not gonna be everyone's cup of tea, but it's so incredibly ambitious that it deserves to be seen. I really loved it and was taken by surprise just how well done it was.