Mind-blowing and mesmerizing!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rating: 10/10 (29 October 2012)

What does a lawyer who saves the life of slave in the 1850's, a gay conductor who is recruited to help another composer revive his career, a reporter who is discovering the cover-up of what could be a dangerous nuclear power plant disaster, a man who gets stuck in a retirement home and now must escape from there, a clone who discovers she is the key to humanity's future, and a futuristic hunter and an alien teaming up to discover how to save humanity, all have in common?
To the narrow minded, or to the uninitiated, probably not much, or nothing at all. But for those of us who have seen Cloud Atlas, it is everything!
Cloud Atlas, based on the book(which I have not read, but will soon)by David Mitchell, is a film about humanity and all that unites us to one another. Through six stories, that are stand alone stories, but all feature links to each other, themes of love, greed, courage, destiny, free will,faith, and reincarnation(!!!) are explored to amazing lengths, that, although the film is three hours long, never bores! In fact, this reviewer was reinvigorated when the credits rolled!
This film has it all:great acting(particularly from Tom Hanks, Jim Sturgess, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, and newcomer Doona Bae), great drama, great action, a terrific score, great costumes, great visuals, and a larger -than-life feel that rivals anything I have ever seen on screen before!
The segments are very strong, in particular the ones about the composer(called Letters from Zedelghem), the one about the man stuck in a retirement home(called The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish) and An Orison of Somni-451, which is the about the clone. The remaining three are The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing(which is the one about the man and the slave), Half-Lives: The First Mystery of Luisa Ray(the mystery about the nuclear reactor), and Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rything After(the last one about the hunter and alien). They are all strong stories, and I was amazed by how they all came together and how they all worked on screen.
A lot of this has to do with the editing. The film cuts back between the stories, sometimes before you expect it to. It is takes a little bit to get used to(for me, it only took about five minutes), but you get quickly caught up and become entranced by what is on screen.
It is funny, it is emotional, it is action-packed,it is spiritual:it is all of these. If someone asked me what this film was about, I would just tell them this:it is about life, and what it means to truly live.
Whether this ends up becoming huge to word of mouth, or whether it remain a modern day cult classic, I don't know. But what I do know, for me at least, is that Cloud Atlas is one of my favorite films, and I can't wait to see it again and again!