Unless you want to spend $12 on mind rape in the cinema, don't bother.

Rating: 1/10 (19 January 2013)

First off; the novel by David Mitchell must be reviewed separately because the recording arts (cinema) must be differentiated from the representational arts (literature) by virtue of medium and also, I haven't read it.
Cloud Atlas will divide audiences into three camps; you will 1) like it for it what appears to be profundity, 2) dislike it for what appears to be complexity or 3) dislike it for what appears to be intellectual dishonesty.
Just to be clear, its directors have rebutted those belonging to the second camp with responses that imply ignorance on the part of viewers and critics. But their reactions cannot be further from the truth because this film, is not as abstract as they imagine it to be.
Since Cloud Atlas is adapted from a novel; those who believe (or argue) that if, a work of art has reached full artistic expression in one form, an adaptation will inevitably be inferior The Coen Brothers' 2007 masterpiece No Country For Old Men and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange are proofs that such belief simply isn't true--it can be done.
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This convoluted mess can be summarized with voice overs from three characters: Isaac Sachs (Tom Hanks) on determinism, Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) and Sonmi (Doona Bae) on consciousness in the realm of quantum physics.
The execution is so pretentious that it makes The Man From Earth look like great cinema, and reduces David Hume's lifelong inquiry into causality resemble middle-school homework. I am surprised that it is written by creators of The Matrix.
Andy and Lana Wachowski claimed their vision of Cloud Atlas is "cinematic art". And if their claim is true, then Cloud Atlas is poor quality of the elite abstractionist tendency.
The gist of it is: interactive collaboration between both parties (artists and observers) is critical. And with Cloud Atlas; attention is solely focused on the directors' obscure vision and fallacious theme (debunked in causal determinism inquiry), with no heed whatsoever being paid to observers who reward their so called "art" with viewership. The Wachowskis are making mockery out of 1) cineliteracy, 2) rigorous directors (Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Haneke) and 3) movie goers who actually respect and love film aesthetics.
The snobbery so implicit in Cloud Atlas reeks of bad manners and ethics.
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Basically free will is impossible unless Isaac Sachs is conjuring the universe as he lives, or he is (and everybody else are) all part of the same consciousness experiencing different strands of existence simultaneously.
This is the whole shebang of what Sonmi blabbers about in the last act but here is the clincher: the disappointing thing about Cloud Atlas-- unlike films that attempt to explain the WHYs with coherent rhetoric and narratives(Synecdoche New York); all they ever do with this adaptation is regurgitate pop-philosophy by having characters echo WHAT their views on causality are, and CONCLUDE with deliberately vague gibbering without so much as a credible premise USING CINEMATIC LANGUAGE.
This film is not the least bit original, inventive or thought provoking--it is offensive that its filmmakers imply artistic inferiority in those who dislike it.
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Besides its core message on causal determinism (cause-effect), there are a few points worth noting.
Number One: Story begins with montages that defy linear timelines for no good reason. For better examples, see Memento and Amour for how timelines are manipulated to advantage. Save yourself the effort of trying to understand the structure because no thoughts were being invested to its form and function.
This film's (jagged and broken) non-linear editing is a cop-out passing off as being "abstract"; for the challenging task of fusing six stories in one graceful, coherent tapestry.
The real shame is; if done right, this tapestry serves as symbolic simultaneity between two entities--the consciousness and the cinema.
Potential in an elegant rhetorical device is squandered blindly.
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Number Two: Dialogues, especially the ones set in post-apocalyptic earth (Tom Hanks and Halle Berry) are written in seemingly undecipherable connotative symbols. By that I mean: 1) centri = centre and thus "eurocentric" = centered on Europe, 2) pute = think and thus "impute" = to attribute, to think of as.
No prize for guessing what "cog" actually means.
This pattern manifests again in the third act of Neo Seoul segment when The Archivist lambastes at Sonmi, and spouts new terminologies such as "corprocrats", "psychogenomicist". But don't be floored, the gesture is Cloud Atlas's idea of creative "originality"--a reference to emerging transdiscplinary trends in the sciences.
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Number Three (Ockham's Razor Fail): Install a dictionary app on your smart phone before watching because they wrote the script using thesauruses--opting for redundant ten dollar words over simple vocabulary.
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Number Four: See Carlos Castaneda and Alexander Solzhenitsyn for uppity parallelisms in this film if; after all the negative reviews from respectable critics, for one reason or another, you find yourself with three vacant hours insignificant enough to exercise mental gymnastics in futility.
Unless you want to be mind raped, this film isn't worth a damn.
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Bottom line; big, relative, complex, transcendental subjects (physics and philosophy) are best reserved for directors with wit enough to shoulder the ethical weight of exploring such life changing themes. Why let the promise of visual effects and Hollywood casts seduce you into enabling such film making tactics? Wait for it to air on TV if you are genuinely curious about the hype this film has been generating.
Cloud Atlas is an annoying metafilm about metaphysical philosophy. The result is epic tomfoolery.