Movies have always been a way for us to forget ourselves, escape into vivid new worlds, try on someone else's life for 90-minutes. Many films seek to unburden their audience. As the reviews begin to pour in, "Cloud Atlas" does not look to be one of those films.
Opening in theaters on Friday Oct. 26, "Cloud Atlas" is already polarizing critics with the same qualities it has advertised itself. This is a movie that wants you to escape, but also wants to genuinely challenge you to think. A prospect that for many may be too much to stomach — especially considering its current company in theaters.
Based on the popular 2004 novel of the same title by British author David Mitchell, "Cloud Atlas" consists of six intertwined stories that take the audience from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each tale is revealed to be a story that is read (or observed) by the main character in the next. Many of the leading actors in the film portray several different people in different eras, with different hair color, and sometimes appearing as a different race, and even gender.
The movie stars Halle Berry, Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Keith David, Jim Sturgess, Bae Doona, Ben Whishaw, Hugo Weaving, and Jim Broadbent, who each play upwards of 6 roles in the film each, in different time periods, genders, and even races.
Helmed by the directing team of Tom Tykwer ("Run Lola Run"), Lana, and Andy Wachoski (The "Matrix" trilogy), the directors have spent press junkets affirming their movie's everything-to-everyone qualities.
Much of the media has wanted to know how to classify the film, wondering if the team were creating a blockbuster, an arthouse film or something in between. The answer? None of the above.
"One of the things that unites us very profoundly is the idea that something can be crazy and experimental, mind-opening and yet still popular," Tykwer said. "And the [type of] cinema we loved... and made us want to make movies, did [many things like that]. [Those films] had the potential to involve you on many levels... [you would be] be struck by its ideas, and yet be hugely entertained. And those are the films we want to make."
That sentiment seems to be much of what is dividing audiences over the film, with many heralding the escapism, technological spectacle, and groundbreaking techniques, but overwhelmed by the project as a whole, unsure of how to classify it.
Chicago Tribune
"For all of the triumphs of 'Cloud Atlas,' I just wish it maintained its power through to the end. You can tell when a comedy wants you to laugh, and when a tear-jerker wants you to cry, and it's clear throughout the final act of this film when it wants you to be moved, to feel some accumulated emotion from this elaborate construction, and for me, it didn't happen.
"Nonetheless, 'Cloud Atlas' is the kind of film that drives discussion and could even advance the medium, particularly if mass audiences are willing to give it a chance, especially on the big screen. Even its shortcomings wind up being more interesting than many recent successes.
Fox News
"'Cloud Atlas' should not work. But it does. Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer have wrangled David Mitchell's beast of a story and delivered a haunting, full-bodied tour de force, and a completely unprecedented movie experience.
"Rich in symbolism and metaphor, 'Cloud Atlas' is not a movie to view just once. It's a film that is equally popcorn entertainment as it is an experience to dissect and discover again and again."
"The production design is extravagant. 'Cloud Atlas' looks like six completely different movies."
"Editor Alexander Berner ... is the real star of the picture. For three hours the film cuts fluidly and rapidly through each story so that within the course of ninety seconds you may see pieces of each of the six stories. It sounds daunting and frustrating, but Berner, as well as the very tight screenplay, makes each cut and each scene feel natural with a logical progression, allowing every story to get the correct amount of coverage. Berner took a very difficult story to lay out on film and cut it in such a way that everything fits together."
The New York Times
"Maybe the achievement of 'Cloud Atlas' should be quantified rather than judged in more conventional, qualitative ways. This is by no means the best movie of the year, but it may be the most movie you can get for the price of a single ticket. It blends farce, suspense, science fiction, melodrama and quite a bit more, not into an approximation of Mr. Mitchell's graceful and virtuosic pastiche, but rather into an unruly grab bag of styles, effects and emotions held together, just barely, by a combination of outlandish daring and humble sincerity."
"Together the filmmakers try so hard to give you everything - the secrets of the universe and the human heart; action, laughs and romance; tragedy and mystery - that you may wind up feeling both grateful and disappointed."
"For a movie devoted to the celebration of freedom, 'Cloud Atlas' works awfully hard to control and contain its meanings, to tell you exactly what it is about rather than allowing you to dream and wonder within its impressively imagined world."
The Hollywood Reporter:
"Not quite soaring into the heavens, but not exactly crash-landing either, "Cloud Atlas" is an impressively mounted, emotionally stilted adaptation..."
"The Wachowskis and Tykwer figured out they could streamline the narrative by cross-cutting between the different epochs and casting the same actors in a multitude of roles. Although this helps to make the whole pill easier to swallow, it also makes it harder to invest in each narrative, while seeing the actors transformed from old to young, black to white, and occasionally gender-bended from male to female, tends to dilute the overall dramatic tension."
"There are so many characters and plots tossed about that no one storyline feels altogether satisfying."
"... A film that aims for the clouds but is often weighed down by its own lofty intentions."