Sunday, November 11, 2012

Cloud Atlas





Beyond Bound, I was never a big fan of the Wachowskis' visual aesthetic. Tom Tykwer's works didn't really interest me at all either. The re- invigorating feeling of these directors' styles should really be attributed to David Mitchell. Now I have not read the book.  But the film seems to have a giant arrow pointing viewers to its pages. The narration and multiple interconnecting story lines all are culled from a mind of feverish ambition. One can tell the creators must have had a hard time trying to condense the 500 pages worth of material into a film. I'm pretty sure at one point, they were poised to flail it off a balcony. Even at its 164 min. running time, it feels like just the type of film that should not work. Yet it is constructed with enough care and respect to the original material and turns out to be the best work of the Wachowskis & Tykwer.

I don't want to take a stroll down cliche alley, but this movie really isn't like anything I have seen before. Where scenes of exuberant rebellion flow into scenes of sheer terror like water rushing into a car. The editing and pacing allows for many of these 'drops' of narrative that circle back on each other. Defining how the choices made clear paths for our future. But after all, what is an ocean but a multitude of drops?

A+

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