Cloud Atlas movie overview

Cloud Atlas is an ambitious, intriguing film but its sprawling narrative feels at once too busy for three hours and overly long.Unfortunately, it’s also a very long film that attempts to pack in far too much in its three hour run.The sci-fi fable might have been better served as a mini-series, or even as a full-blown television series, giving it the elbow room it deserved to explore each story line and each character throughout its time-spanning narrative.

Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Hugo Weaving, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, Ben Whishaw, and James D’Arcy, star in multiple roles that span sex and race in six distinct but interwoven narratives.What the film gets right it gets very right. There are moments of real emotion and beauty. The ambition is palpable. The visuals are daunting and the acting is often, but not always, excellent.

Unfortunately there’s simply too much going on. There’s too much story here for three hours, and yet three hours still manages to feel overly long. The ambition is commendable but the execution falls short.At the heart of the film’s deepest failure is its cast and the necessity and limitations of reusing each actor over so many roles. There’s an uncanny valley element at play that I found offputting, but that others may not mind.

Still, it’s nice to see someone like Tom Hanks do something different, to break out of the comfortable roles he’s stuck to for so long. Hugo Weaving, on the other hand, will always be the evil Elfish lord of the Matrix no matter what film I see him in.I won’t spoil or summarize here – for an excellent discussion of the film’s plot and themes, read Alyssa Rosenberg’s excellent review.

She calls the film “a deeply religious movie in search of a theology” which is a perfect way to summarize at least some of its shortcomings (and, paradoxically, part of what makes it fascinating.)Is it worth the premium theatre ticket price?

If you love spectacle the answer is unequivocally yes, especially if you enjoy stories of reincarnation, spirituality, and science fiction.This is what we refer to as a “theatre movie” which is how I would describe something like Avatar - not terrific, but big enough and visually poignant enough to warrant the ticket price.

If spectacle isn’t your thing, however, I’d wait.The film is, on the whole, good but not great. A worthy rental, to be sure, if you have a television capable of playing it in living color.

Cloud Atlas is ambitious, epic, lovely, and an absolute mess all at the same time. Which is more than can be said for many of its contemporaries.