Cloud Atlas

Looks interesting, though even after sitting through a 5+ minute trailer, I am still confused about the film is about.
 
Yes - on the story... watched it earlier today (non QT HD version) and just watched again.

Lots to take in.

Let's hope it's as interesting as the trailer. Wonder how long the movie duration is, as there seems to be a myriad of stories in there. 3 hrs maybe?
 
I saw an early screening of it. It's one of the greatest films I have ever seen (and that was with incomplete special effects, score, etc.).
 
Saw ‎it at the WGA last night with the Wachowskis in attendance for Q&A. It's something really remarkable, and boy did they ever have to labor heroically to get it made. I can't say as to whether or not any specific person will like it but if you're at all interested in cinema as an art form, and seeing what a really stellar cast and production team did with it, see this movie.

Sure hope the studio sends screeners. I want a copy.

EDIT - not relevant to he film itself but yeah, Lana looks great. Had I not known it would never have occurred to me that she had a transition in her past.
 
I heard this was flawed but brilliant.

In addition to the concept, I'm intrigued in that there were 2 teams of directors- the Wachowskis doing the sci fi and Tom Tykwer taking the romance, and then the editor intercut the stories, looking for threads to weave together...

Hope to see it soon.
 
Cant wait to see this, heard its amazing, and heard it's horrible. Usually movies that so polarize people are worth watching!
 
Reviewers say it's a beautiful mess, and my friends (who I trust more than reviewers) say it's remarkable. I'm definitely catching it tomorrow.
 
The film was visually beautiful from start to finish. One of the most beautiful films I've seen. The movie itself, I went into it with an open mind, and found that about halfway through I was a bit confused and unsure of how I felt. It wasn't until about an hour and forty five minutes in that the film came together, and everything started to make sense. Once it hit this point, I understood (for the most part) and loved the film. When I got out, I really thought about it, that I started putting more and more things together and realized that my opinion of the film kept on growing stronger (which is usually not the case). Now I firmly believe that it is near the top of my list of favorite films, both in story and visually. I am now heading back to see it for a second time, so I can clear up even more questions that I still had, and I am just as excited going into it this time as I was the first! Excellent film overall!
 
I saw this last night. It's a very challenging film to watch as it flips back and forward in time weaving many different stories together over a time span of 300-400 years.

I guess I have a problem with the basic concept of this film, where I think I would have rather watched just one complete story taking place in one period of time, than jumping back and forth and seeing just the highlights from a bunch of different stories.

Mixing up the different stories the way the film does, I find it loses context, you have no idea about the characters backstories, about what made them who they are, and why you might care about them.

Visually some of it was beautiful to look at, though I always find futuristic concepts to be completely unrealistic given the year they are supposed to take place. The world won't change that much in such a short time span. ( I am a huge Blade Runner fan, and have always considered the world of Blade Runner to be based in an alternate reality because it takes place in 2019, where I think it should have been set in 2519 given the societal and technological changes depicted in the film )
 
This was a really interesting film. Some movies like Cloud Atlas, go beyond "good" or "bad" and are simply interesting. I applaud the effort and magnitude of a project like this... it's simply a monstrous undertaking. The production was absolutely first class in every way, such a beautiful film and imo VERY much worth the price of admission alone. The narrative certainly wasn't the easiest thing to decipher. Essentially a bunch of short stories inter-cut together, which don't actually intertwine or end up supporting each-other in a significant way. The movie pretty much plops you right in the middle of each one of these 6 mini novellas contained within the main structure of the film... but in a way that it doesn't give you an understanding of the why, how or what.

Best way to watch this I think, is just to go along for the ride. You find at some point, that it's not trying to mind f%*& you or confuse you in a traditional "non-linear" sense where various independent plot elements seemingly out of place, are eventually weaved into a single unifying narrative. It's just a bunch of separate stories, and you get a few clues as to what they might mean when shown in tandem. Definitely interesting and worth a second watch imo!
 
This is a difficult one to review. On the one hand I admire the hell out of what they were trying to do and really love parts of it, but at the same time I have to acknowledge that it's not a complete success. For the first forty minutes or so, this film felt like a near disaster to me, both brilliant and terrible at the same time. The interweaving story lines really took a while to click together, but once they did, it started to work. A more gentle easing into the structure probably would have been better. Instead they hit the ground running, bouncing around amongst timelines willy nilly which it makes it difficult to establish an emotional link to the various characters. It also has the problem all 'anthology' type stories have in that some plots are more interesting than others. I could have done without the whole old folks home storyline. As amusing as it was at times, it jarred tonally with the rest. And the mcguffin of that plot, the 50,000 dollars, was left unresolved (unless I missed something). Also, using the same actors in different timelines felt more like a distracting gimmick, even if it does make sense thematically, as the make up jobs are of various quality and believability. But even with all this, I have to say that when this movie works, it really works. The whole Neo Seoul storyline and the After The Fall storyline were both great. You can tell the Wachowski's really felt at home during those segments and they felt the most well rounded. The mystery about the power plant was also pretty well done. The story about the composer of the Cloud Atlas Sextet wasn't completely satisfying for me. For something that seemed like it was supposed to be a unifying element to all the storylines, the Cloud Atlas of the title, the musical connection between all the characters was never really driven home at the end. I was expecting more out of that. Also, both the main characters in this segment, the boy and the old man, take an abrupt turn in their relationship that didn't seem properly built up to me. Seemed like a casualty of cutting between the stories too vigorously. In the end I think cutting between the segments so boldly was an experiment that didn't totally pay off. Even when it works, I always felt the work. It never achieves a state of effortless transcendence. Pulling back a bit and letting the stories breathe more individually probably would have been better, and still allowed the filmmakers to communicate that same theme of inter-connectedness. I guess the best way to sum up my feelings for this film is that it felt like Babe Ruth stepping up to the plate, pointing boldly to the left field bleachers, and then hitting a triple. A triple's pretty good, but considering the ambition, it felt like a disappointment.
 
Just saw this. Brilliant. I honestly can't understand why people are having a problem with it and can only call it a failing of the audience. I think those having problems with it have the same problem as my mum has with computers. It's not that they can't understand it, it's that they refuse to believe they can or want to. Looking for something complicated and refusing to believe the simplicity (the stories are really simple...the themes a little more complicated). The first six minutes give you the first minute of each storyline and by the end of that I was pretty much settled.

It's relatively straightforward in format...six stories, each segment advancing a single plot point of one story before switching to the next. Kind of like flicking through the channels on tv and watching several shows simultaneously. Or a steroid fuelled extension of the type of intertwined film such as Pulp Fiction or perhaps Love Actually would be a better reference. Except the intertwined stories fall in different timelines and the connections are through artistic legacies such as letters, books and music (although a couple of characters do appear as young and old versions).

As the stories progress themes and threads between them start to link together in a more holistic and esoteric way rather than literal. You don't have to open yourself to that but it's there. The whole thing washes over you and the beats fall where you would expect in any film in the overall sequence except not necessarily within the same story. It's a lot harder to describe than it was to watch. If the individual stories were edited into six shorts I don't think any of them individually would possess the formula flow and beats but the whole did. It's a wonderful device for the filmmaker - need to juxtapose a laugh to enhance a serious/sad moment to follow? Switch story for an instant change of tone (the geriatric escape raised the roof in the theatre).

While the film is full of distraction for those of us who are awake when watching a film (picking the actors, mentally rearranging to extract the individual stories/threads) it is obvious almost immediately that this is a multi-watch film. There is a whole bunch of symbols such as the buttons on his coat that appear throughout the film that I'm not sure yet what they meant. But to be honest even while watching I just felt like I didn't need to break it down to it's constituents. The magic lies between the cracks. It was just a fulfilling holistic experience that I can't fault. There were maybe three moments in the entire 2hrs 16min that triggered my logical brain and brought me out of the movie just a little (cannibals wiping out a village but leaving the bodies?) but minor things and far less than a typical movie. And this is the first movie where I genuinely and without reservation liked Tom Hanks, since watching Big as a child.

The makeup was a bit hit and miss but where it was hit it was brilliant. I only picked about 80% of the actor transformations - even though I knew it had to Keith David because he was the only black male I still couldn't reconcile a couple of his characters. With more mental effort I'm sure I could have picked them all but the movie was too engrossing to permit playing such mental games with any degree of concentration. A couple were terrible to the point of distraction but mostly in the briefer appearances (Ewing's wife needed facial prosthetics to enhance nose/brow/cheekbones and better contacts) but in other cases that worked even better. Hugo Weaving as the nurse was hilariously bad but it just enhanced the humour of the nursing home sequence. On the whole the makeup was very good. Effects wise the Neo-Seoul was just beautiful - I'd love to see a whole film set in that world.

I don't know if this film is a true 5 but I can't think of a single reason to mark it down. One of our group didn't like it, he said we should have seen Diehard. In the ensuing discussion he couldn't give me one reason for hating it so much that didn't leave me thinking less of him. In fact he is my sister's boyfriend and I'm (literally - no joke) tempted to suggest my sister to break up with him after the post-film discussion, she's far too intelligent for him and he's not pretty enough to compensate for it.

It is not for anyone who needs to know what a film is about in five words or less.
 
Haha. Impressive, well done :)

Of course that description would elicit a "huh?" from my sister's boyfriend. He'd understand 2 maybe 3 of 5 words.
 
Batutta said:
For the first forty minutes or so, this film felt like a near disaster to me, both brilliant and terrible at the same time. The interweaving story lines really took a while to click together, but once they did, it started to work. A more gentle easing into the structure probably would have been better. Instead they hit the ground running, bouncing around amongst timelines willy nilly which it makes it difficult to establish an emotional link to the various characters. It also has the problem all 'anthology' type stories have in that some plots are more interesting than others. I could have done without the whole old folks home storyline. As amusing as it was at times, it jarred tonally with the rest.
Click to expand...

That's how I saw it. The humour of the retirement home, helped the audience round out the film. 173mins of story/drama like that would have been too much.

x actors playing xxx roles smacks of budget constraints and distracts from following the story, eg: when you recognise Susan Sarandon .. again.

The 50 grand, what happened? They should have dropped that too. Apart from that, in the car on the way home I was able to answer all the questions from my wife. I liked that bit.

Cheers.
 
Just now watched it. My understanding is that the protagonist of each story, the one with the birthmark, is the same character reincarnated in each time period. That being the case, I think having the same actors in every time period really confused it. For a while it seemed like the same actors represented the same "souls," so to speak, but I guess that wasn't the case. Perhaps they were simply meant to be descendants of earlier characters.

But Holy Kenneth Branagh, Hugh Grant can't do an American accent.

My biggest problem, I think, is that no particular cohesiveness was ever really established between the stories. Each was influenced by an element of the story which happened chronologically previously, but there was never any convincing reason why the storytelling couldn't have been linear. They were not parallel stories. They were not particularly intertwined.
 
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