“The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is, as I have said, a principal appetite of the soul.” ― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception
Back in 1999, when I first started Oscarwatch, my daughter was one year old. I had a part time job writing film reviews for a small Santa Monica newspaper but with very little income and a baby to raise all on my own I couldn’t really afford childcare and it was too much of a burden to ask my sister, who was already letting me live in her guest house in Van Nuys for free. So I took my baby with me to see movies. I had a very nice editor who let me see one movie per week after it had already opened. I knew that a good movie reviewer would go to screenings instead and write them early. But screenings were impossible. There was no way to sneak in a swaddled infant. I don’t like crying babies in movie theaters, even the ones in Van Nuys where crying babies happen with regularity. Nonetheless, I timed my movie-going to my daughter’s napping. Most of the time it worked out. She could say she grew up in movie theaters. That didn’t mean she was going to love movies.
14 years later, though I’ve tried many times to get her to sit down and watch movies with me — “Hey E.T. is on! You’re gonna love E.T.!” But because teens have so many other distractions now movies are not an easy sell. I’ve tried to instill a love of movies in my daughter’s life. Her two favorite films have been Shakespeare in Love and Moulin Rouge. She wasn’t a movie kid like I was. I started watching them on our black and white TV back in the 1970s, mostly old movies. I would watch them all day and when I was old enough to go to the movies, that’s all I did. I have always preferred the fantasy alternative movies offered to real life. But not my daughter. She likes her social networking much more. She likes reading and online comics and skyping and Tumblr. I had been mostly resigned to us being different in that way. That is, until I took her to see Cloud Atlas.
Because Cloud Atlas doesn’t follow traditional storytelling (neither does Moulin Rouge) it resonated with her more than the more traditional stories I’ve been trying to force upon her all of these years. The freedom of vision, the imagination set free, the impossible realized — it spoke to her in a way that most movies don’t. You see, my daughter’s generation is moving a lot faster than Hollywood can keep up with. To them, in their high school here in Los Angeles, gender is a fluid thing. They see gay couples as ordinary couples. There isn’t any sort of cultural or ethnic division. Cloud Atlas is a film that does the same thing — it has erased the lines both between hetero love and same-sex love, and with cultural and ethnic diversity. There are no specific lines drawn in Cloud Atlas — it is about the internal, not the external. It is about a personal revolution and political activism. It is about soul mates and eternal love. It is about reincarnation and the beauty — the enduring tragic beauty — of life. It blew my daughter’s mind.
[You can hear Emma discuss Cloud Atlas on this week’s episode of Oscar Podcast. Emma joins the conversation around the 45:00 minute mark.]
Sitting next to her, I noticed that it was the first time I saw her cry during a film. She would lean forward during the exciting parts and clap whenever something great happened to one of the characters. I was stunned at this reaction. Usually she has her face in a book or a computer and when I say “wait, wait, you GOTTA SEE THIS!” She’ll look up briefly and then go back to what was far more interesting to her. There was more to her reaction than merely loving this movie – it had really changed the way she saw movies at all, finally, for the first time in her life seeing them as something more than the wallpaper she grew up around.
It reminded me of the power cinema has to change who we are. I know that my daughter’s love for this film will lead her down so many paths. She’ll start with the book Cloud Atlas. She’ll probably visit all of the films by Andy and Lana Wachowski – seeing Lana as Lana and not Larry. She’ll know that movies don’t have to fit into any specific structure – if they work, they work. Cloud Atlas was a daring risk by the studio and the filmmakers. An unfilmable book, many locations, lots of costumes and makeup — would anyone buy it? It’s possible that the movie will still hit with a thud. It’s possible it will be known as a bomb — so far, the few reviews aren’t that encouraging. When the Wachowskis, Tom Tykwer and the author of the book, David Mitchell came out on stage for the q&a afterwards it was like looking at a panel of embattled warriors who were attempting a dangerous feat; you can’t reach those kinds of heights unless you are prepared to fail.
There are so many things about Cloud Atlas that have stayed with me since seeing it a few days ago. My daughter, of course, is still buzzing about it and plans an all out Tumblr assault to get people she knows to see it. I will probably never know what it must be to be 14 and to have your mind blown like that. It is probably a once in a lifetime experience. To me, it is a near-masterpiece with one part that doesn’t quite work. The part that doesn’t work is dwarfed by what does work, though it’s enough to make it not “perfect” and thus, fodder for annoyed critics to tear apart.
What really works in the movie is the futuristic sci-fi storyline with the stunning Jim Sturgess and Doona Bae. It’s the part of the movie you keep wanting to return to. The other great part is Ben Whishaw’s love story with James D’Arcy. They thread themselves through all of the other story lines, too. The filmmakers made the choice to have a few actors play many parts, which drives home the notion of regeneration and reincarnation. This isn’t overt in the book, apparently, but the added layer makes the film a guessing game of who is who and what does that mean? Some of them are impossible to recognize. That part of it will be very familiar to anyone who has ever worked in theater or been an actor. It is one of the great challenges of actors on stage to play multiple parts. It isn’t attempted much on film and it only barely works in Cloud Atlas – but it works.
Tom Hanks and Halle Berry are the stars and they bring the whole thing together in wondrous ways. But there is so much more to Cloud Atlas than their love story. Its scope is breathtaking and though it might not land anywhere in the awards race it is an unforgettable cinematic experience. Just ask my 14-year-old who is seeing the ceiling crack and the spectral light of daring artistic vision.
When I think of how she has changed in 14 years I’m so grateful to have created my own business to allow me to be here for her every step of the way. It has been the best 14 years of my life so far. In many ways, my memory of raising her is not unlike Cloud Atlas, which switches in between the past, present and future in real time. She is still my baby, the kindergartner and the teenager — she is all of those things in different moments. I know that she was changed by Cloud Atlas. It opened doors in her mind that she didn’t even know were there. It makes me hopeful that there is still evolution in Hollywood and in literature. We adhere to the rules of the past to help us comprehend the way the world changes around us. But a young mind like my daughter’s is simply open to the possibilities.
