"Cloud Atlas"
How did I not hear about this movie before? Just watched it a few nights ago and it is all-round one of the absolute best movies I have ever seen. Intricate, thoughtful, well-acted, with an amazing cast--I wish I could show Mum it. She found "The Matrix" very disappointing (only wanting to see it in the first place because she had heard about what a fabulous take on the whole "reality is an illusion" concept it was; as a Buddhist (well, a Buddhist Anglican) the idea of a movie tackling the subject and doing it well intrigued her, but she said after that it was like being told to expect Shakespeare and getting Dr. Seuss) but I think she would have liked this one. If she could follow it.
"Cloud Atlas" is a very long movie, just a bit over three hours, which is good, because it has a lot of ground to cover. A LOT of ground. Several centuries' worth, intertwining similar stories--well, not so much similar stories, per se, as radically different stories with a similar rhythm, exploring the concept of freedom and slavery, in different guises. Chronologically-later events reference previous incidents, as in a book one character is reading, just incidentally to that story, that was written by a character in an earlier century. What amounts to indentured servants a few centuries up the road are influenced by a movie based on the experiences of a character in another story, in round about the Eighties or so; one of them in turn influences events several centuries even further on. The movie follows the different threads as they weave in and out and around each other, each individual story being told chronologically, but the whole crossing back and forth from one to another. All told there are about seven different stories being told, if I'm counting correctly (and based on my memory; I didn't bother keeping track of the number of them as it was happening; I was too absorbed), with an ensemble cast taking on different roles in each time.
And it IS absorbing. The first scene is difficult to grasp, because of the language being used; we had the subtitles on for that bit and it helped a lot because the rhythm of the speech is about what you'd expect English to sound like so far in the future, and is, I suspect, based on l33t-speak. The meaning comes across fine, but some of the nuances are lost if one doesn't listen closely. The next scene takes place in the past, and is completely unrelated to the first, apparently; and by the time we get the third scene of an author at his typewriter it's fantastic that he is talking about flash-backs and how pretentious and confusing they can be; it was a well-placed scene that came at just the right time, because otherwise I, at least (coming into it completely cold as I did, Mike having picked it and giving me no prior information about it other than it was very long) would have begun to be a bit fed-up. We watched "Slipstream," directed by and starring Anthony Hopkins, several years ago, and boy, if you want a compare-and-contrast movie as a demonstration of how to NOT do this, that movie would be it. Never mind night-and-day comparisons; these two movies aren't even in the same galaxy.
"Cloud Atlas" is a remarkable, intelligent, deeply absorbing film that I would probably have to file as science fiction by default, simply because of the two futuristic stories; but it is equal parts historical drama and action adventure. There are few better ways to spend an evening than watching a mind-blowingly good, intelligent film. You should all watch it at your earliest convenience (it came out in 2012 so it's available online) because it was amazing. I may have to buy it on DVD simply because when film-makers turn out something this good, they should be encouraged to keep it up.
--I was going to insert a trailer here but I couldn't find one that didn't have at least one of what I would consider to be fairly major spoilers, so just take it from me that it's a lush, beautiful, thoughtful, thoroughly-engrossing film, and go and see it. Then we can watch the trailers together. :-)
This entry was originally posted at http://kryss-labryn.dreamwidth.org/90568.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
"Cloud Atlas" is a very long movie, just a bit over three hours, which is good, because it has a lot of ground to cover. A LOT of ground. Several centuries' worth, intertwining similar stories--well, not so much similar stories, per se, as radically different stories with a similar rhythm, exploring the concept of freedom and slavery, in different guises. Chronologically-later events reference previous incidents, as in a book one character is reading, just incidentally to that story, that was written by a character in an earlier century. What amounts to indentured servants a few centuries up the road are influenced by a movie based on the experiences of a character in another story, in round about the Eighties or so; one of them in turn influences events several centuries even further on. The movie follows the different threads as they weave in and out and around each other, each individual story being told chronologically, but the whole crossing back and forth from one to another. All told there are about seven different stories being told, if I'm counting correctly (and based on my memory; I didn't bother keeping track of the number of them as it was happening; I was too absorbed), with an ensemble cast taking on different roles in each time.
And it IS absorbing. The first scene is difficult to grasp, because of the language being used; we had the subtitles on for that bit and it helped a lot because the rhythm of the speech is about what you'd expect English to sound like so far in the future, and is, I suspect, based on l33t-speak. The meaning comes across fine, but some of the nuances are lost if one doesn't listen closely. The next scene takes place in the past, and is completely unrelated to the first, apparently; and by the time we get the third scene of an author at his typewriter it's fantastic that he is talking about flash-backs and how pretentious and confusing they can be; it was a well-placed scene that came at just the right time, because otherwise I, at least (coming into it completely cold as I did, Mike having picked it and giving me no prior information about it other than it was very long) would have begun to be a bit fed-up. We watched "Slipstream," directed by and starring Anthony Hopkins, several years ago, and boy, if you want a compare-and-contrast movie as a demonstration of how to NOT do this, that movie would be it. Never mind night-and-day comparisons; these two movies aren't even in the same galaxy.
"Cloud Atlas" is a remarkable, intelligent, deeply absorbing film that I would probably have to file as science fiction by default, simply because of the two futuristic stories; but it is equal parts historical drama and action adventure. There are few better ways to spend an evening than watching a mind-blowingly good, intelligent film. You should all watch it at your earliest convenience (it came out in 2012 so it's available online) because it was amazing. I may have to buy it on DVD simply because when film-makers turn out something this good, they should be encouraged to keep it up.
--I was going to insert a trailer here but I couldn't find one that didn't have at least one of what I would consider to be fairly major spoilers, so just take it from me that it's a lush, beautiful, thoughtful, thoroughly-engrossing film, and go and see it. Then we can watch the trailers together. :-)
This entry was originally posted at http://kryss-labryn.dreamwidth.org/90568.html. Please comment there using OpenID.