A Bad Connection

What do ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, ‘Cast Away’, ’12 Monkeys’, and ‘The Matrix’ have in common? ‘Cloud Atlas’, that’s what. It’s a German Drama/Science Fiction film of sorts that got released recently. Well, 2012 recently. 

With a stellar cast ensemble such as this one, I was hoping to see something truly brilliant. My flame of hope however got extinguished very abruptly once I noticed that the plot clearly got lost somewhere between, uhm, the clouds. 

The lead cast of this movie are: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Hugh Grant, and Susan Sarandon, to name the more known actors. Then there are also, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, James D’Arcy, Keith David, Zhou Xun and David Gyasi.

There are moments of interpretative brightness coming from the actors when tapping into the psyches of their characters, but mostly it feels like an exercise in futility, and none of it really seems to - connect, not only them with each other, but with you the viewer too. 

Hugo Weaving appears to at times quite literally do a reinterpretation of a slightly more devilish Agent Smith, whereas Hanks appears to still be lost on an island, only this time, he's on quite a few. It’s all a bit out there, but, ‘Heil Zeitgeist’, I guess.  

It definitely seems to be far easier winning an Oscar with no clothes on rather than doing so wearing any, if you had to analyse Berry’s labored efforts. Less shouldn’t be more, not in the dropping-your-knickers-in-front-of-the-camera sense anyway. Apparently if you want to ride the gravy train of acting success, flashing your privates is all that will do. No wonder authentic performances in general are falling by the way side.

The big idea:

It all just seems like a bit of a repeat of the same old message: 'The powerful that exploits the weak for their own personal economical gain, the more connected you are, the more powerful. The more powerful, why, the skies the limit. The concept of ‘everything is connected’, also seems to get lost in the many sub-plots, including the watered down one of: ‘What was, will be, what is, already was’, and round-and-round we go.

Unfortunately, the world on this atlas seems to be spinning out of control in a manner that is just excessively farfetched, not allowing any real plot to thicken at all, least of all to communicate anything sound. It's a very extravagant, yet watered down attempt to portray re-incarnation, or saying that what we do now can have ripple effects in the future.

It just proofs once again that just because you are being different, doesn’t mean you are special, the one message ‘Cloud Atlas’ does succeed in communicating.    

Fortunately, the make-up for this movie was not half bad, but again, also reminiscent of Star Trek, and therefore - again, uninspiring.

What you can align yourself with in a more positive way, is the concept of love that metaphorically gets portrayed in the form of music, and that music is an unique universal language that we all seem to speak. This idea gets woven quite well into the film, and throughout it. Almost like a thread in a tapestry. I found it refreshing. 

If love is indeed the music that connects us all and everything else, then I believe it’s the only connection worth having.