This is a very long opening for what could've been a masterpiece

Rating: 5/10 (29 December 2012)

In the film, Cloud Atlas is the name of the musical piece that is being made by one of the main characters, so I see appropriate to analyze the film as if it was a classical music piece. The first half of the movie tries so hard to make a mystery out of one dimensional stories by hiding important ( and rather obvious)information from the viewer. And even though the narrator tries to explain everything to you two or three times, you don't get the movie until it's about to finish. However, just like in an orchestra you listen to different solos before the climax of the piece, so does Cloud Atlas builds for so long, that you think "this is going to be so amazing". The first two hours of the movie is like the ascend of really big roller-coaster, the problem is what comes on the other side. The climax in the movie (which is audio-ed by the climax of the Cloud Atlas Sixteth), is short, obvious and predictable, and the ending and conclusion is mediocre.
The movie is about two good stories, two not so good ones, and two bad stories glued up together with Tom Hanks trying so desperately to convince you that all of them are linked together. However, I don't see any reason why all the stories couldn't been fit into one time period (i.e. Second Wordl War), where one of the characters would be fighting to free the Jews instead of freeing the African - Americans from slavery, the other one would be a musician striving to get some fame in the middle of a war, the other a publisher / writer that's too old for his job, a reporter that risks her life in order to cover a war story, and a Jew (instead of a "fabricant") inspiring others to survive and free themselves before they're made into soap.
I don't understand how this movie got to have an 8.+ rating here, I think that people who didn't understand it rated it higher so they wouldn't seem stupid.