From the Archives, July, 2013
Cloud Atlas is a very well made movie that attempts to adapt a very complicated novel that I assiduously avoided reading (though another novel by David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, is among my favorite reads of the last few years). The novel (and film) deal with six distinct — though related by character, theme and impact — stories that take place over a several hundred year span from the mid-1800’s to an unidentified post-apocalyptic future. The movie is long, just under 3 hours, and has a curious cast — Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Susan Sarandon and many others — each playing multiple roles in the various stories, at multiple ages, with multiple layers of make-up.
Supposedly it’s an exploration of how acts of kindness or evil ripple through the ages with both intended and unintended consequences and how curiously things play out. The six stories interweave nicely and it’s far easier to follow than I’d anticipated. Whether it all makes sense in terms of action and consequence would take a far more careful rewatching.
In and of itself, it’s quite enjoyable, and certainly an ambitious attempt to adapt a quite complex novel to film.