Right at the start of Cloud Atlas we're give a piece of advice from one of the characters, who talks about his "disdain for flashbacks and flashforwards and all such tricksy gimmicks," but he believes that "if you extend your patience for just a moment you will find there is a method to this tale of madness."
Even with patience this film is going to be divise. It's just shy of three-hours long, has a dozen cast members who each play up to six different characters (often times changing gender and race) over six intertwining timelines, it's directed by three different people, and is based on a book that is regarded by most everyone as unfilmable. So why watch it? Because it might just be a work of genius.
Despite all the characters and complex timelines, the editing is so intuitive, so elegantly done, that you won't question the leap from a ship in the south pacific in 1849, to a fast food joint in Korea in 2144, and then backwards to the steeples of Edinburgh in 1936. Some stories do work better than others, but the way they all build together and are linked by a common goal - the desire to effect change, and to do and be better - gives the weaker stories more momentum than they would if we'd seen each story separately, as is (sort of) the case with the book.
The two best pieces of advise I can offer anyone that finds themselves intrigued enough to check it out, are:
1) Even though Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant et al play a vast array of characters, instead of finding this jarring - particularly early on as you try and work out who's who under all the prosthetics - embrace it. You're supposed to recognise them. Tom Hanks is playing the same person throughout, and so are all the others. Each new character Hanks plays is imbued with the same soul. Their names change, as do most other things about them and around them, but who they are at heart is still the same. When the story moves forward 30, 40, 50 years and more, the question is: will they learn from their past mistakes? Some take a step back, some forward. Even with the above advice, you will find the prosthetics distracting, at least initially, but understanding why the same actors crop up definitely eases the way.
2) A small note this one. Watch it with subtitles. In the final storyline (in terms of the year in which it's set) you will struggle to work out what-in-the-who-why-where unless you have them on. The film's true to the language used in David Mitchell's novel, but you have time to get to grips with it on the page, you don't get that opportunity with a film. Subtitles does solve this, but the directors (the Wachowskis and Tom Tkywer) should have clocked how much of a problem it would be.
Long story short: it is batshit crazy; but it has a plan.
Overall: 9/10
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