Cloud Atlas By David Mitchell (Photo credit: life serial) |
In 1936, a young, gay composer
named Robert Frobisher flees from his lover’s hotel room. Decades later, the haunting melody he composes finds its way into the world of a reporter investigating a nuclear power
plant. Decades before, an ill young lawyer leaves behind a journal for Frobisher to find.
These are just a few of the connections between characters,
times, and places that turn up in Cloud Atlas, a stunning visual feast which
spans the distant past, the present, and the far future. It
features stalwart actors such as Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving and Hugh
Grant in multiple roles, heavily made up in some cases and crossing ethnic and
gender barriers. The actors are ably supported
by computer-generated locations so imaginative they make the heart skip a few
beats.
Yet for all its technical wizardry and narrative cleverness,
Cloud Atlas never quite rises to the heights it could have achieved.
After nearly three hours of jumping back and
forth between multiple narratives, the story falls short of saying anything new
or offering new ideas.
The movie’s central theme—that people are all connected and
that our lives are not our own—is repeated ad nauseum like a liturgy to the
faithful. If you accept this philosophy
as true, here it is again to reinforce your belief. If you do not accept it, Cloud Atlas offers
no compelling argument.
What we are left with instead is the cinematic equivalent of
Trivial Pursuit. Just as players of the
venerable board game move forward by correctly answering questions of a, well,
trivial nature, so does Cloud Atlas connect its narratives in trivial ways. So what if Frobisher reads the lawyer’s incomplete narrative? So what if
Frobisher’s composition turns up in a record store decades after his death?
Some of the narratives, granted, are fun to watch—particularly
an unscrupulous book publisher’s harrowing attempts to escape from a nursing home—and others
explore the choices people make between cowardice and bravery. Religion, consumerism, and corruption turn up
as recurring themes.
But, in the end, the story telling and connections reminded
me of classic Marvel and DC comics.
Characters from one series would pop up
unexpectedly in another. A weapon
abandoned by one villain would be discovered issues later by another. A storyline from one book would lead to a new
plotline in another.
And while such connections can be fun to piece together,
Cloud Atlas sadly leaves little to the imagination. Everything is spelled out for us, leaving
nothing for the reader to do but marvel at the technical and narrative
gymnastics. (Hint for writers: If you’re trying to impress the audience
with how clever you are, you’re going about it wrong.) I felt I was watching a story, not
participating in it.
The difference between watching a story and participating in
one can be summed up by audience reactions to Cloud Atlas and
Marvel's The Avengers, released last summer. When
Avengers ended, the audience applauded. When Cloud Atlas ended, people filed somberly out of the theater. A funeral would have been more engaging.
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