I have found there to be two types of film critics in all of my years reading and watching how film criticism has evolved for the past 13 years or so. There are those who prefer to remain always the objective observer, studying whether the film “works” or not. Occasionally, a film will break through that objectivity and move them greatly, much to their surprise. But another kind of critic, perhaps the modern day blogger, affords themselves the opportunity to simply let go, even if it means going against the status quo, because they are more fan than critic. Roger Ebert is neither of these, though he is closer to the former than the latter. He isn’t someone who allows him emotions to get in the way of his analysis, and yet, he doesn’t dismiss a film that has that ability.
On the other side of the spectrum are many a good bad review of Cloud Atlas. There are plenty of those. I am not sure of what use they are to you other than to tell you not to buy a ticket to the movie. At any rate, there are three reviews you should definitely read before you see it. One is by Roger Ebert, one by Owen Gleiberman at EW and the other, AO Scott from the NY Times. It is also worth reading the debate between Lisa Schwarzbaum and B. Ruby Rich who toss the ball back and forth.
Ebert’s review describes the movie I saw. If you go in looking for it to make sense you will have a hard time with it. If you trust the storytellers are taking you somewhere worthwhile it will work its magic on you. But you have to wait about 45 minutes on your first viewing. My second viewing was a deeper, richer experience. I got more what it was about. But I cried both times. I feel like this film and Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master are two opposing declarations of the human experience as I’ve come to know it. You could probably add in Life of Pi, I suppose, though it is less difficult to understand. The Master is uniquely grounded on the planet earth. It is a story about a specific culture. Cloud Atlas is more cosmic, less grounded. Both drill through our collective core. Gobbledygook? Perhaps. I like Ebert’s review which says, don’t even bother trying to understand it.
Ebert:
Surely this is one of the most ambitious films ever made. The little world of film criticism has been alive with interpretations of it, which propose to explain something that lies outside explanation. Any explanation of a work of art must be found in it, not taken to it. As a film teacher, I was always being told by students that a film by David Lynch, say, or Warner Herzog, was “a retelling of the life of Christ, say, or ‘Moby Dick.’ ” My standard reply was: Maybe it’s simply the telling of itself.
Yet “Cloud Atlas” cries out for an explanation, and surely you’ve noticed that I’ve been tap-dancing around one. I could tell you that it relates six stories taking place between the years 1849 and 2346. I could tell you that the same actors appear in different roles, playing characters of different races, genders and ages. Some are not even human, but fabricants. I could tell you that the acting and makeup are so effective that often I had no idea if I was looking at Tom Hanks, Halle Berry or Jim Broadbent. I could tell you that, and what help is it?
And…
I was never, ever bored by “Cloud Atlas.” On my second viewing, I gave up any attempt to work out the logical connections between the segments, stories and characters. What was important was that I set my mind free to play. Clouds do not really look like camels or sailing ships or castles in the sky. They are simply a natural process at work. So too, perhaps, are our lives. Because we have minds and clouds do not, we desire freedom. That is the shape the characters in “Cloud Atlas” take, and how they attempt to direct our thoughts. Any concrete, factual attempt to nail the film down to cold fact, to tell you what it “means,” is as pointless as trying to build a clockwork orange.
But, oh, what a film this is! And what a demonstration of the magical, dreamlike qualities of the cinema. And what an opportunity for the actors. And what a leap by the directors, who free themselves from the chains of narrative continuity. And then the wisdom of the old man staring into the flames makes perfect sense.
And AO Scott is more mixed, though somewhat inexplicably, when he writes:
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.
I think he’s right about that, but read his entire review. I think it’s probably the most fair assessment I’ve seen, even though it’s probably a mixed to negative review. He doesn’t write it off entirely, which shows both the depth of his intelligence and his willingness to present his opinion without fear of looking stupid – yes, we’ve all been hard on AO Scott and all of the critics at one time or another. Why, I don’t know. I guess you always want people to agree with you and when they don’t it’s disappointing. Nonetheless, and in the final analysis, and after ten years of reading his reviews, I trust his opinion is an unfettered one.
Finally EW’s Owen Gleiberman is likewise perplexed by his reaction to the movie, gives it a B+ and writes:
The way the tales link up isn’t labored or obvious. It’s more like a stone skipping with surprising precision across the water, or a player moving from one videogame level to the next. The heroine of the Seoul segment is a wage-slave “fabricant” (played by the stoic but inwardly fiery Korean actress Doona Bae) who is spurred to revolt after watching a fragment of an old movie that features Hanks in the role of a beleaguered book editor. That same book editor gets a segment of his own, where he’s played by Broadbent as a frazzled literary twit who gets locked up in an old-age home. A political tale set in 1973 is where Tykwer and the Wachowskis come closest to rooting the film in a topical — and far from conventionally liberal — idea: that the possibilities for nuclear power and an energy-independent America were killed off by the oil companies. This story, too, teams Berry (as an investigative reporter) and Hanks (as a nerdy nuclear scientist) in a romantic connection that reverberates throughout.
The movie’s Big Idea is to wake us up to the ways that we’re all linked through time: The dream of one person passes to the next, finally erupting in revolution. What I liked about Cloud Atlas is that it brings this rather banal revelation to life through an inspired fusion of form and content. The stories bounce off one another in devious and intricate ways. And the multiple-role casting, and bravura makeup that renders it possible (not just flipped genders but switched races as well), is more than a gimmick — it’s like a burlesque of identity. Having Hugh Grant play a U.S. energy stooge in a wide Me Decade tie is fun…but Grant as a bloodthirsty primitive in savage skeletal war paint? Now, that’s casting against type. Hugo Weaving shows up as assorted villains (including a ghost-devil who slavers like a rotting leprechaun), and Hanks lends the film a glint of moral complexity by devotedly playing both noble (that goatherd) and evil (a shipboard doctor in the 1800s who tries to poison a fellow for his money; a squinty-eyed Cockney mobster who tosses a book critic off a balcony).
Cloud Atlas is like a gonzo miniseries that, at times, seems to be cramming the entire history of Hollywood genre films into one multi-tentacled parable of freedom and authoritarian control. You’ll catch echoes of a hundred other pop touchstones, from Roots to Guy Ritchie films to Soylent Green. I would never call Cloud Atlas profound — it’s more like a pulpy middlebrow head trip — but the hook of the movie is that Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer so clearly meant everything that they put in it.
I disagree with him on the note of whether it’s profound or not. I think it absolutely has that ability but it depends on your own personal belief system. I think what it says about ethnic and sexual identity is quite profound. But ultimately, like The Master and Life of Pi, your experience with it will depend on what you bring to it. Who you are when you walk in the door. What you think changes over time. Life becomes something different once you pass 40 years old. It’s important to remember that, always, when judging works of art. They are most often, simply, our own reflection.
Like Ebert, I want to see the film a third time. In fact, I’m desperate to see it a third time. Every major organ in my body is pleading with me to see it a third time. My brain is hungry to solve the mysteries. My heart wants to swoon again. My body, well, that goes without saying, what with Ben Wishaw, Jim Sturgess and James D’Arcy all cast in the film. I know, ew, gross.
As far as Oscars go, right now I see an original score frontrunner. Other than that, I don’t know.
I’m surprised at how many people don’t like this movie! I thought it was beautifully profound and the idea that we persist throughout the universe, making small choices that ultimately affect a much larger picture, because, like Sturgess says in the film, it’s all just a bunch of little drops that make up the whole. It’s all there if you just pay attention.
“As far as Oscars go, right now I see an original score frontrunner. Other than that, I don’t know.”
How about Makeup and Visual Effects, which actually seem much more likely, in my opinion, than its film score?
I know you and several others praised the film, but I just didn’t see it. Like Ebert, I was never bored, which is good, but I wasn’t wowed either. I was willing to go with it for the first 2 hours, but after that, I was kind of ready for it to be over, knowing it wouldn’t really attempt to offer up a satisfying sense of closure.
I actually think it would have been stronger if it was cut down quite a bit.
I have to disagree that Ebert doesn’t let his emotions into his critiques, he has on many occasions written heavily on his emotions and feelings whilst in the middle of a screening and let that push into his overall interpretation of the film he’s reviewing. He’s a great critic, whether you agree with him or not, but he is certainly not as stale and rigid as others, he’s really more like the bloggers than you think.
Three hours is too long to watch a movie.
Sorry Steve ( arrow pointing at you) you snuck in there while I was typing.
^What’s wrong with crying during a movie? You say it like crying is an inferior or weak reaction to something.
Jon, displaying emotion is healthy and sharing it is good for all of us.
Be considerate on how you view others. I wish you the best.
“I don’t see how they got everything into three hours. This book was begging for a twelve-hour miniseries for some ambitious network like HBO.”
I’m with you on that – it’s like squeezing The Iliad into a couple of hours. What we’ll get is “the essence” (hate that term, sounds like a smell). Let’s see how they handle it.
Is there a film that Sacha doesnt cry during? Seriously, you over use that one my friend!
I cannot wait to see this. Sunday! I am currently obsessed with the concept of what one brings to a film absolutely determining one’s reaction. And the difference between critique…and whatever the opposite…or less, for lack of a better word, critical is…letting go to actually FEEL for a film.
One thing going against Cloud Atlas is the expectation that the movie is trying to be “grand”. Watching the trailer or reading the source material beforehand makes it easy for many critics to come into the theater and sit down with a knife and fork and some Tums and dig in.
When any part of this movie isn’t “grand”, the acting, the accents, a subplot, etc., they treat the entire meal like piece of unwanted gristle and push the plate away.
I haven’t seen the movie yet but I intend to. I will sit down knowing that not everything on the menu will be 5-stars and I doubt I’ll want to burn the restaurant down.
Sasha, the fact the you and Ebert want to re-watch the movie interests me enough to give this movie a try.
I decided to read the book before I saw the movie and I’m 75% of the way through. At first the connections of the six stories was not obvious other than a sly connection, but as I’m winding down it’s fun to see exactly how the stories are connected, and after I’ve learned each connection this far, it’s more satisfying than I would have believed. It’s rather ingenious.
I have no idea what the film’s structure is, but, damn, I don’t see how they got everything into three hours. This book was begging for a twelve-hour miniseries for some ambitious network like HBO. That would have given room for the story to breathe like it does in the rather lengthy book.
It will be interesting to see if people who have read the book will have a completely different perspective than those who don’t. But I know I can’t wait to see it on Tueday (most likely)
I would rather suggest catching Sleep Tight if it’s in your city. Its screenplay is wound tight. Its directing is top notch. Almost effortlessly suspenseful by design. It also contains one of the most memorable psychos ever put onscreen. Tosar is so magnetic that you almost feel inclined to root for the bastard. Women might be put off by the film, though. It doesn’t play by the rules and there is no heroine.
Sasha, the idea of “don’t even bother trying to understand it” is hogwash and giving a free pass to this movie. It’s not an experimental or non-narrative film — clearly all about narrative actually — and as such needs to be judged on its (in this case) interlocking story elements, coherence and character development. If Cloud Atlas is not able to be understood (which I believe it is), then it’s a failure.
i haven’t seen it yet- but this is something to remember… Ebert didn’t give “moonrise”, “dark knight rises”, “the master” (probably my top 3 of the year so far) a “100” (4-star review).
Wanted to love it madly, but frankly found it not compelling with the exception of isolated moments from Bae and Whishaw. Reed makes some good points in his piece. This is a movie about ideas not people, and that is a critical misstep for a movie about the interconnectedness of humans — there’s little humanity in it. It’s watchable but never catches fire, and the “After the Fall” sequence is laughable — the fragmented “English” is all but indecipherable. Sure there is a “vision” and technical prowess on display here — but the stories so expertly woven add up to very little for such an expansive undertaking. Everyone is swooning about how “epic” it is, but at the end if the day if you don’t have characters you care about giving us human experiences then all the spectacle in the world doesn’t cover this — and that, to me, is Cloud Atlas, a bright shiny toy that fails to reach inside of us and make the characters us, or us them. And the make-up is beyond silly — this guessing game from scene-to-scene not only shatters our suspension of disbelief but also our belief in the story.
LOL. Yes, Reed’s stamp of disapproval is a step in the right direction.
I will have to read that Owen Gleiberman review. I often vehemently disagree with him and question his motivations.
Two things guarantee that I will enjoy this film: Ebert’s score of a perfect 100 and Rex Reed comparing it to “a garbage truck exploding.”
Sounds like a sure thing, to me.
I’m boycotting this movie for underusing Zhou Xun the Goddess of Film Acting.