That's probably what you'll ask yourself after seeing Cloud Atlas. It's very long, has a story cosmic in scope, and that story is broken up into six mini-stories, going back and forth between them at any time. It's easy to get lost in the story, but its artistic qualities give it good marks.
Like the play Angels in America, its multiple stories feature the same cast, playing a different character in each one. For its cast, this movie features such actors as Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, Bae Doona, Hugo Weaving, Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw. Over the centuries, they play the following:
1. A lawyer (Sturgess) in 1849, who befriends a Moriori stowaway on a voyage back to San Francisco.
2. A musician (Whishaw) in 1936 Belgium, trying to compose his masterwork, the Cloud Atlas Sextet, while living under the domineering rule of an aging maestro (Broadbent).
3. A investigative reporter (Berry) in 1973 San Francisco, looking into the shady going-ons of a Nuclear Plant.
4. A book publisher (Broadbent) in 2012 London, confined against his will to a nursing home by his brother (Grant).
5. A clone slave (Bae) in the next century Seoul, who escapes the confines of her existence at a Fast Food place with the help of a revolutionary (Sturgess).
6. A tribesman (Hanks) in the way-off future Hawaii, who meets Meronym (Berry) of the advanced Prescients.
Its story was so big that it had to have three directors. Two of them are the Wachowskis, creators of The Matrix and the third is Tom Tykwer, director of Run Lola Run. Their adaptation of David Mitchell's novel has not only the visual splendor of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but also its tendency for confusion as well.
Its makeup department, headed by Daniel Parker and Jeremy Woodhead, deserves the most attention. They render the actors into a wide variety of characters, even some unexpected supporting ones. Weaving, for example, goes from an allegorical devil in the last mini-story to a Nurse Ratched parody in the fourth. This display of prosthesis makes the game of "spot the actor" a fun one.
As I said before, its non-linear structure and massive length punishes those with low attention spans. It's quite easy to lose some names, characters and plot points as the film ponders life's mysteries more and more. For those unprepared, the end result is not a serene "whoa," but a stumped, perplexed "what?!"
A second take maybe necessary for those who wish to see this movie. It's not the kind that you can just get in a day. Not in the least.
Its makeup department, headed by Daniel Parker and Jeremy Woodhead, deserves the most attention. They render the actors into a wide variety of characters, even some unexpected supporting ones. Weaving, for example, goes from an allegorical devil in the last mini-story to a Nurse Ratched parody in the fourth. This display of prosthesis makes the game of "spot the actor" a fun one.
As I said before, its non-linear structure and massive length punishes those with low attention spans. It's quite easy to lose some names, characters and plot points as the film ponders life's mysteries more and more. For those unprepared, the end result is not a serene "whoa," but a stumped, perplexed "what?!"
A second take maybe necessary for those who wish to see this movie. It's not the kind that you can just get in a day. Not in the least.
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