David Mitchell's epic philosophical novel Cloud Atlas was widely considered unfilmable — even by its author — when it came out in 2004. That's because the book's ornate structure, with stories nested inside stories across five centuries, seemed too complicated to be taken in quickly in a movie. But those complications were what attracted The Matrix's Andy and Lana (nee Larry) Wachowski, and Run Lola Run's Tom Tykwer to the project. Turning complexity into cineplexity is kind of what they do.
Not content with Mitchell's complications, in fact, they've added a few of their own, with the result that the unfilmable Cloud Atlas is now a film, for better or worse. Mostly worse I'd say, but give these folks credit: Undaunted by a novel with six plots, each with its own genre, time period and lingo — from 1840s slave melodrama to 1930s love story to 1970s corporate thriller to present-day crime comedy to futuristic clone wars saga to post-apocalyptic 23rd century epic — they decided it needed a little tricking up to keep it interesting.
Rather than telling each story on its own, they've opted to weave the disparate threads together and cast each of their principal actors in five or six roles, more or less ignoring whether they're conventionally suited for them or not. Halle Berry, for instance, plays a black journalist, a white Jewish-German intellectual, an Asian man, and three other parts. Hugo Weaving inhabits a variety of villains including a Nurse Ratched lookalike. Tom Hanks is a tattooed goatherd in the post-apocalyptic future, a murderous doctor in the distant past, a scummy writer in the present, and in the 1970s, a principled scientist who says things like this:
"Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principles of uncertainty."
Dunno about you, but I understand the theory of relativity and uncertainty principles in verrrrrry surface-y, insubstantial ways, and I think I understand belief, fear and love pretty well. But I fear I don't love dialogue that gets this squishy, so let me just summarize: We are all interconnected; the things that separate us shouldn't; freedom is precious; self-expression is essential, and when a butterfly flaps its wings ...
Enlarge Reiner Bajo/Warner Bros.
Halle Berry's characters in Cloud Atlas crisscross time and space. The actress plays six roles, including German intellectual Jocasta Ayrs (above) and an Asian man.