Destined to be a classic

Rating: 10/10 (27 October 2012)

Most films exist purely for pleasure, to occupy your mind for a couple hours: take you to another world, let you forget about your problems, and you leave the theater $11 a seat poorer (not to mention what you spent on consumables), yet no richer for the experience. You paid for nothing more than a memory that, more often than not, is not particularly memorable.
But every once in a while you do see something extraordinary. Something that makes you want to tell all your friends about the movie you just saw, and look askance at someone who says they didn't like it, as if to say, "What movie did you just watch?" Or, perhaps, "Oh, I'm sorry, were you expecting Transformers 4?" What Cloud Atlas does that is most impressive, to me, is that it asks us, as an audience, to expect more from our movies. Most of the movies we consider great have done this: Citizen Kane pioneered, among its almost innumerable technical advancements, non-linear storytelling; Psycho had the guts to kill off its main character 1/3 of the way into the movie, setting up similar shocks in future films like Alien and Scream.
Perhaps Cloud Atlas's closest comparison, however, is 2001. Both were ravaged by some critics and fiercely embraced by others. Both asked questions about the universe and our existence in it without giving us answers, asking us only to ask questions of ourselves. Neither have neat endings that wrap everything up. Cloud Atlas will probably fair the same as 2001 commercially: that is to say, make little at the box office but have a long and rich life on video. (2001 ultimately played long in theaters, but in today's industry it's unlikely Cloud Atlas will have the opportunity to stick around as long.)
This film is a singular experience. I can only speak about it in hyperbole, a language previously unknown to me. People will be watching this movie and discussing it for decades. People will become filmmakers because of this movie. It will be taught in film classes. I know I myself will see it at least twice more in the theater. And thirty years from now we'll look back at the list of films that were nominated for Best Picture for 2012, and we'll say, "I can't even remember half these movies. Can you believe Cloud Atlas didn't win that year?"