Review: 'Cloud Atlas' starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry

Adapting David Mitchell's complex, interweaving puzzle box of a novel in Cloud Atlas

posed a unique sort of challenge. The book seamlessly merges six storylines, spread through time and space with fragments of each blending into the next and back again. Yet they are all bonded, not just through characters that appear in various forms along the way, but also in some of the larger themes that resonate throughout. 

As easy as it's become to rip the Wachowski siblings over the aimlessness of their Matrix films, or their penchant for new age mumbo-jumbo, there is perhaps no pair better suited to undertaking an epic such as this. Here working alongside German director Tom Tykwer(Run Lola Run), they've taken the complicated work Mitchell's done and did the unexpected by making it even more fractious. It's a bold decision, but the type you'd expect from such a group of forward thinkers, who for better or for worse have all attempted films that break the mold. What they've done is take Cloud Atlas and filter it through their own unique vision, aligning the threads in different and unexpected ways, bringing their gift for passionate, sweeping scope and weaving a richer experience that defies simple description.

There's no straight narrative to speak of, as each story breaks and jumps around in time at a moment's notice and without warning. Yet each feels like a close-relative to the other, the ideas, themes, and occasionally dialogue crossing over so that to try and single out an individual thread is to reduce the whole.  At its simplest, Cloud Atlas is about how one action in the past can cause a butterfly effect in the future. Those who wish to look at the film through this lens won't be disappointed, but there are larger ideas at play that only enhance it. The everlasting nature of love; the propensity to hate; greed; jealousy; and faith are all explored in masterful storytelling strokes. Perhaps the theme that best stood out for me in particular was the human desire for freedom. Freedom from our pasts; freedom from oppression; freedom from confinement; and freedom from our inherent natures. Cloud Atlas is a film that can and should be many things to many different kinds of people.

The all-star cast encompasses a number of different roles in different genders and races, although many of these characters carry many of the same character traits. For instance, Hugo Weaving plays a subconscious devil haunting a future version of Tom Hanks and encouraging him to be a coward. Narratively, the story begins in much the same way as Mitchell's novel, on a 19th century South Pacific ship where a naive lawyer (Jim Sturgess) sees his world expanded in good and bad ways by a stowaway and a treacherous doctor (Hanks).

In 1936 Cambridge, a penniless musician (Ben Whishaw) becomes the amanuensis to an aging, opportunistic composer (Jim Broadbent). An intrepid reporter (Halle Berry) in 1970s San Francisco attempts to live up to her father's legacy by breaking a whistleblower's story on a nuclear power plant that failed safety inspections. In current times, a book publisher (Broadbent) with money troubles finds himself comically locked up in a nursing home.

The greatest impacts are felt in the future, both the near and distant. In Neo-Seoul, a cloned Asian waitress(Bae Doona) rebels against tyranny with the help of her human lover(Sturgess). In the far-flung future, after the world has been destroyed in an event known as "The Fall", Zachry (Hanks) of a primitive island tribe fights against his own savage instincts when visited by Meronym (Berry), the last of a technological race.

Everyone involved show a remarkable adaptability and versatility, but it's Hanks who is the lynchpin of practically every segment through his comedic and dramatic range. He brings certain quirkiness as the love-struck scientist working alongside Berry's reporter, while also showing how nasty he can be as a violent novelist who comes up with a unique way of pumping up book sales. Only Hugh Grant seems to really struggle, and it's not really because he's bad, but mostly due to his characters not really having the importance of the others.

Technically, the film is absolutely stunning. From the very first frame, Cloud Atlas looks and feels bigger than anything else out there. Not just visually, but in terms of stature. The Wachowskis and Tykwer are aiming to do something more. They're attempting to hit a bar that others will spend years just trying to equal. Not everything quite works out in the way they were hoping, however. As stunning and wonderfully detailed as each era looks, the opposite is the case for many of the transformations the actors undergo. Most distracting are the totally unconvincing make-up to turn the very British Jim Sturgess into an Asian, and the same goes for veteran actor Keith David who underwent the same ridiculous procedure.

Clocking in at a shade under three hours in length, some of the storylines are stretched way too thin. So many different segments mean some get more attention than others, leading to transitions that aren't quite as smooth and connections that aren't as clearly defined. 

There are plenty of films with great ambitions that far exceed their grasp. Last year's The Tree of Life is one example, while many would also note Ridley Scott's Prometheus. Both are good films in their own way, but Cloud Atlas, despite being of the sci-fi genre, is more closely aligned with the former. Much like Terrence Malick's film, Cloud Atlas aims to inspire and ask deep questions without any talk of franchises and sequels. If not everything in it is successful, Cloud Atlas is a riveting, thought-provoking, and inventive work of art. The conclusion hits a raw nerve of honesty, sadness, and hopefulness that the Wachowskis and Tykwer so carefully opened us up to. While not perfect, we need more movies like Cloud Atlas that aspire to be something greater.