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Filmmakers
find it attractive to be ambitious. It is a luxury of cinema, often
producing
an epic scale or a multilayered story, reflecting numerous threads and
character. However, the separation between art and mere grandiosity is
the
clarity of the director's intentions through the formal control of
their work.
How one uses the cinematic language to express and solve a problem is
the heart
of great filmmaking.
Andy
and Lana Wachowski are rarely short of ambition but their recent films
have
been bloated and undisciplined. They ended their Matrix
trilogy dismally and their last film Speed Racer, made
over four years ago, was a financial and critical
dud. As filmmakers they lack restraint. They over-stylise their work,
relying
heavily on technique estranged from meaning. Their love of geek culture
traps
them into imitating anime, manga and kung fu films, but without
thematic, tonal
or stylistic cohesion.
As
people they are difficult to gauge too as they have been notorious
recluses and
deliberately media shy. Only recently did they lift the veil from their
personal lives because they were making Cloud
Atlas with a third director Tom Tykwer (Run
Lola Run). They also opted to address a deep personal issue. Once
known as
Larry, Lana Wachowski transitioned from a man into a woman, following a
sex
change.
Transgender
is fascinating in the context of the Wachowski's entire filmography.
The five
films they've directed have used avatars to hide the identities and
motives of
their central characters, or to subvert the conventional gender roles
of
archetypal characters. As a semi-autobiographical element in their
work, it is
one of the more intriguing aspects of their films.
Adapting
British author David Mitchell's, Cloud
Atlas takes avatars and hidden identities to extremes and reaches a
new height
of tedium. It is a film that is as ambitious as the Wachowski's have
ever done, told
over multiple timelines, with the same actors playing different
characters in makeup.
But
the thematic spine that adjoins all of these stories is lost in an
opaque,
perpetually interrupted narrative. At nearly three hours
long, the film is intriguing and conceptually unique
but it coasts too regularly on its own deliberate ambiguity and
pretenses of
telling a story, without ever elucidating the cryptic details of each
universe.
The
plot is a jumble of six threads that are thinly stretched and often
terribly imbalanced.
In 1849 a young man (Jim Sturgess) is helping a slave onboard a ship
and
defending him from the other crew members. On an island, a man (Tom
Hanks) sees
a spaceship land near his village and then a mysterious woman (Halle
Berry)
helps him to defend his people from barbarian warriors.
In
Britain during the 1930s, Robert is a gay musician (Ben Wishaw)
determined to
write music with Vyvyan (Jim Broadbent), a grumpy but famous composer.
He
constructs a piece called The Cloud Atlas Sextet. In the 1970s a
reporter
(Halle Berry again) is investigating a secret report about a nuclear
reactor. 2012:
Jim Broadbent also plays Timothy, a publisher intimidated by a criminal
who has
written a book and is now threatening him. He asks his brother for help
and is
sent to a nursing home, overseen by an evil nurse (Hugo Weaving). In
the year
2144, a cloned restaurant waitress (Doona Bae) makes a discovery about
humanity
in an oppressive futuristic society.
Dividing
the stories between the directors has resulted in a lack of equal
weight and
value. Jim's story feels thinly stretched and uneventful compared to
more
memorable and extensive threads like the nursing home. There are
striking
images, like a satellite dish unfolding itself, but the smaller scope
of the
vintage periods reduces the visual flair. The only moderately exciting
sequence
is Timothy's escape plan. It outshines an emotionless future setting,
derivative of Blade Runner and The Matrix,
which would have been
earmarked as the visual centerpiece.
Also
like The Matrix, the same florid and sometimes
pretentious philosophical dialogue haunts the film too. Ideas about the
afterlife and people being reborn under different regimes are
suffocated by
overwritten lines like: "one can transcend any convention if one can
conceive doing so." The dialogue touches on everything from consumerism
to
slavery but are these issues ever adjoined or resolved?
The
intercutting, non-linear structure fails to answer this question due to
the
impatience of the editing, culling the rhythm and fluidity. Threads are
interrupted
by pointless jump cuts to other universes, never long enough to
complement each
other in meaning. There is also a heavy reliance on gimmicks that
distracts
from personal investment in the stories. What is the significance of
Hugo
Weaving playing not only a hitman, but a green monster in a top hat and
a
female nurse? Who are these characters?
Critically,
when the narratives are formally compared as an expression of karma and
reincarnation, the juxtaposition is vacuous. The technique serves only
to
enhance the velocity of the chase scenes, instead of a synonymous
theme. No
matter how lofty the ambition, this is fatal in a film addressing
interconnections.
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